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Please do not use an "irrational form of persuasion" on slashdot. We're too smart for that :)

Your irrational form of persuasion was in the form of "guilt by association" which involves the application of a faulty analogy.

You are implying that merely because the United States is becoming slightly stricter with identifying who enters and leaves its' county, that they are somehow turning into the next Soviet Empire.

Another example: "Canada is becoming the next Soviet Union because of the introduction of a strictly government run medicare system"

The analogies one can make are endless.

My personal opinion on this issue is that I don't care if they want my passport, I always have my passport when I leave my country, it's the sane thing to do. If the Americans want my fingerprints though, I'd think twice before going on a vacation there, but I still wouldn't call them the U.S.S.R.!

The only problem I see is your use of the Slippery Slope Logical Fallacy

at least make a convincing argument rather than resorting to fallacious accusations.

ANOTHER thing I love. Many of these comments are the equivalent of "Well if I were part of this anarchist community I would be really pissed."

Well if you read the comments about the press release from people who actually *go* to the site, you'll find a huge outpouring of support.

People who learned courage from D&D shouldn't try to mock people who are trapped in real situations.

There are really two arguments here:
a. It's a gay/liberal/$BUGBEAR conspiricy
b. it undermines "traditional family values"

Most everyone I know who is against gay marriage uses point b as their reasoning, and IMHO it is a valid argument. Whether or not "traditional family values" are a necessary or good thing may be debatable, but this is certainly no logical fallacy.

Uh, did you totally miss the part about "Fallacy: Appeal to Tradition"?

While I happen to think that government has no business prohibiting families made up of same-sex couples (or even multiple-partner marriages), there are those who strongly feel otherwise, and not simply for reasons of puritan bigotry.

1. It's wrong because the Bible says so. (Fallacy: Appeal to Authority)
2. It shouldn't be allowed because it goes against long-standing societal traditions (Fallacy: Appeal to Tradition)
3. It's a gay/liberal/$BUGBEAR conspiricy to undermine "traditional family values" (Fallacy: Appeal to Hatred

Their objections are not entirely without merit.

There may be a well-reasoned, logical argment supporting the view that the state has a compelling interest to grant special legal benefits to people who are in one class of binding long-term relationships while denying those benefits to all other classes of long-term binding relationships, but I have yet to hear one.

if Iraq was all about oil, what does religious fundamentalism have to do with it? The pope opposed the war in Iraq, as did quite a few religious people, so by your own argument, the civilian deaths in Iraq have nothing to do with religious fundamentalism.

I'm not sure I agree with the OP, but your response is an example of a logical fallacy- that of hasty generalization. Ever hear anyone say "Slashdot does not speak with one voice?" All religious fundamentalists do not speak with one voice or act with one common motive. The Pope (assuming for sake of argument that he is a "religious fundamentalist" as you say he is) is certainly not the same kind of religious fundamentalist as the president- for one thing, he's Catholic. The Catholic Church was not pushing for a war. That doesn't imply a damn thing about the president. He could be a member of a secret fundamentalist oil-worshipping cult for all we know.

Is Bush a bible-thumping hick, or is he a master schemer serving exclusively a global oil elite?

Yes.

"But this begs the question..."

no it doesn't. it raises the question. the phrase "begging the question" means something else entirely.

Yes, I do wonder why you automatically assume everyone this government picks is an evil man.

Because Poisoning the well only counts as a logical fallacy when you can't demonstrate that every single person that drinks from the well ends up dead five minutes later.

In this case, I provided the list of bodies. Feel free to go ahead and take a drink anyway.


projecting your hatred of W onto every single person he associates with

"Hatred" != "Pity", but in this case, since he only associates with yes-men, I can safely presume that anyone he likes, I will probably not.


There is absolutely no real reason to believe that Griffith is a bad person for the job

Except for his total lack of "real" work experience. Don't forget that.

But on the other point, I will concede that I have no basis for calling him a creationist - In fact, given his high level of education, statistically speaking he most likely does not believe in such superstitious drivel.

CNN is currently getting slaughtered by Fox News, so it means one of two things:

1.) The majority of news viewers don't think Fox News is biased.
2.) Fox News is biased after all, and therefore the majority of viewership is conservative, contrary to what Michael Moore tells us.


I have to call you on the logical fallacy in your arguement.

Ever consider that maybe Fox News is winning the ratings ware because it's even more sensationalist than CNN? Or any other number of possibilities? But no, it has to boil down to two possibilities, both of which support your arguement (and your preexisting worldview).

" I think the point is that these sites are unquestionably legal, even to boneheaded organizations like the MPAA. (It's necessary to make things very, very simple such that they can understand.)"

I don't think this explanation is necessary to the MPAA or anybody else. The MPAA has taken down the Torrent sites that trafficked largely in pirated material, but they are ignoring the legal sites.

The confusion might lie in some of the responses to the takedowns of the pirate sites. Remember how Lokitorrent was wrapping themselves in the "defend P2P!" cloak? That was utter nonsense; the MPAA was going after Lokitorrent; not BitTorrent or P2P. Likewise, "MPAA v. Grokster" is the MPAA's attempt to put Grokster out of business, but many Slashdotters liked to take the position that the MPAA was trying to shut down P2P itself. This is what is known as a straw man fallacy.

I think that this position will ultimately hurt P2P's chances of survival. As long as Slashdotters and others continue to equate Lokitorrent and other pirate sites with P2P itself, P2P will continue to be stained by folks like Loki who were using it to make money off of piracy. This is fighting for a short-term goal (getting sympathy for Lokitorrent) at the expense of the long-term goal (making the public at large understand that P2P is a great technology that can be used in a responsible manner that respects creators' rights).

This is the time to promote and use Torrent sites that provide only material distributed with the creators' permission. It isn't the time to act like martyrs and proclaim the death of P2P each time a pirate gets nailed.

Warning Shots - warning that you're going to murder -- This is not murder. Illogical; slippery slope argument.

Target Practice - practicing murder -- This is not murder; paper and clay targets are not alive. Illogical; begging the question argument.

Long-Term Loans from Financial Institutions - threatening murder -- Threatening murder != murder.

Track & Field - competing at murdering skills -- This is not even *close* to murder (is there a trend here?). Gun fires a *blank*, not a bullet into the air.

Happiness (if warm) - warmth come from emptying the gun into your ex-wife -- Straw-man argument. Illogical.

Cracking Walnuts at 100 yards - murdering poor, innocent walnuts -- Walnuts do not live once they have fallen from the tree. This is more akin to "shooting a dead horse." Will have to try shooting walnuts at 100 yards sometime...

Network Administration (see LART, definition of) - they'll have a different attitude if you murder them -- Illogical. Again, straw-man argument. Funny.

Warning Shots - warning that you're going to murder -- This is not murder. Illogical; slippery slope argument.

Target Practice - practicing murder -- This is not murder; paper and clay targets are not alive. Illogical; begging the question argument.

Long-Term Loans from Financial Institutions - threatening murder -- Threatening murder != murder.

Track & Field - competing at murdering skills -- This is not even *close* to murder (is there a trend here?). Gun fires a *blank*, not a bullet into the air.

Happiness (if warm) - warmth come from emptying the gun into your ex-wife -- Straw-man argument. Illogical.

Cracking Walnuts at 100 yards - murdering poor, innocent walnuts -- Walnuts do not live once they have fallen from the tree. This is more akin to "shooting a dead horse." Will have to try shooting walnuts at 100 yards sometime...

Network Administration (see LART, definition of) - they'll have a different attitude if you murder them -- Illogical. Again, straw-man argument. Funny.

Warning Shots - warning that you're going to murder -- This is not murder. Illogical; slippery slope argument.

Target Practice - practicing murder -- This is not murder; paper and clay targets are not alive. Illogical; begging the question argument.

Long-Term Loans from Financial Institutions - threatening murder -- Threatening murder != murder.

Track & Field - competing at murdering skills -- This is not even *close* to murder (is there a trend here?). Gun fires a *blank*, not a bullet into the air.

Happiness (if warm) - warmth come from emptying the gun into your ex-wife -- Straw-man argument. Illogical.

Cracking Walnuts at 100 yards - murdering poor, innocent walnuts -- Walnuts do not live once they have fallen from the tree. This is more akin to "shooting a dead horse." Will have to try shooting walnuts at 100 yards sometime...

Network Administration (see LART, definition of) - they'll have a different attitude if you murder them -- Illogical. Again, straw-man argument. Funny.

You can't counter one fallacy with another. Sillyness will ensue.

Fallacies of composition are bad, mmmmmm'kay?

Unfortunatley, this is a classic ad hominem attack.

You have done nothing to advance your point because you have offered nothing to counter the substance of "The Ford guy"'s allegations. Now, if you'd demonstrated, say, a conflict of interest, that would have been compelling, but just flailing away at someone does not a useful advocate make.

"The fact that they are successful suddenly makes them crap?"

Strawman. Actually, I think they were suggesting the opposite: that the writer considers their music mediocre, and uses them as an example of the mediocre music being released by the record labels.

Knee + Jerk == Reaction.

Saying I am a dumbass is a fallacy of logic. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-homine m.html/ He's not resisting. He obviously gave up and settled. Doesn't that kinda make him a coward? They're not trying to control what you can and cannot download. That would be impossible. They just don't want people to distribute their copyrighten material. They're not trying to create some radically new laws. No, they're just enforcing old ones. How much effort does it really take to rip a dvd and spread it over the internet? Next to nil. A quick trip to http://www.doom9.org/ reveals that there are millions of different rip packs and tools designed to rip dvds making it almost effortless to rip a dvd.

Maybe not being a moron to you is cutting the cable on your internet connection, but outside of that, your windows box is infected, period.

I have seen clean windows 2000 installs with thier browsers hijacked, after all available updates were run before 4 manufacturers sites were reached to download drivers.

Maybe I'm a moron too, but I don't think so, I think you are simply unaware that your "clean as a whistle" pc is 0wned.

I see, you don't get it, but I'm stupid.

Well, I'll spell it out for you, are you ready?

Watergate was a crime committed by adults.
This article is a about a crime committed by a teenager, or, if you prefer, a non-adult.

Since we CLAIM to treat adults and non-adults differently in criminal law, it is NOT a valid comparison to compare the punishment for a crime commited by adults, to the punishment a non-adult should receive.

Of course, I didn't even BOTHER to mention that the scope and impact of the two crimes are on opposite ends of the severity scale.

Your attack by the way is what smart people call an ad hominem attack. You can read ALL about it and the other fallacies that you ARE making on this page.

While the two assertions are compatible, that clearly wasn't the intent of the original poster. By stating "since 9/11", the original poster was trying to link corruption with the administration in office at that time.

your post is a spurious straw man.

Actually, the original post was a Post Hoc fallacy. The subsequent poster was simply pointing out the error.

that's not what he said. he said, "since 9/11 the american government is growing more and more corrupt," not that it started then. this assertion is not incompatible with yours.

your post is a spurious straw man. you pay more attention next time, and don't waste everybody's time with your bullshit.

"Of course this can only mean that all peer reviewed is wrong, or at least none of it can be trusted to be right."

Hyperbole much?

No, of course I did not say, nor intend that.

What I did say and intend to convey is that we cannot rely on peer review to provide unbiased results, only LESS BIASED than they would be by default.

I do not claim that the scientific community would be any better off without peer review (others have, and I leave this bean in their pockets, as I have no educated opinion on the alternatives).

In other words: be a critical thinker, and never let any process or organization make you think that you no longer NEED to think.

"Since we can not trust any methodology which is not 100% perfect we can go on believing in whatever we want."

Now you've created your second level of straw man.

"We can safely ignore all science and scientists and just open up the bible or listen to Rush Limbaugh."

Or "Nature" ;-)

This is a slippery slope fallacy. It's entirely possible to punish the murderer and the gun dealer if he is found irresponsible but not go after people less directly involved.

That THIRD WORLD TERRORIST is a member of the BILDERBERGER group, planning MIND CONTROL by bouncing the HAARP signals off of CHEMTRAILS, Manipulating the FEDERAL RESERVE and denying you STATUS as a LEGAL PERSON (and your BIRTH CERTIFICATE is a receipt for this payment). INCOME TAX is illegal under the CONSTITUTION of the US and the BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT, and only the "POWER OF THE COUNTY" can enforce the true constitution. You don't actually need a DRIVERS LICENSE because MAGNA CARTA guarantees the right to use the "public way". The KYOTO PROTOCOL is a branch of the ELDERS OF ZION, and by reducing greenhouse gasses, safeguards the performance of CHEMTRAILS in reflecting HAARP signals so they can continue using MIND CONTROL along with their friends in the PSYCHIATRIC PROFESSION.

I'm sure there's even more crazy conspiracy theories out there...

[snip]if you believe how he tells it, he was involved in every national security crisis in the past 30 years and if it wasn't for him, by golly, we'd all be doomed. He almost single-handedly saves the day every time![/snip]

Ok, stop bashing on the guy just because he disagreed with Bush and was asked to leave. I see alot of this, if your not with us, your against us posts about people who disagree with Bush.

I think you'll find that ad hominem attacks are probably one of, if not the, most commonly used responses by the neo-cons. You see it literally every day. The fact that it is in fact considered a logical fallacy doesn't seem to bother them, as I suppose it works.

Sounds to me like you don't care for slashdot much. If that's the case, why are you here?

It's not that I don't like Slashdot in general, but I don't believe everything I read here.

Oh yes, let's just generalize for the purpose of making him sound like a moron. At least he's sticking to the topic, virus and how it exploits IE.

Everything he said applies to the Linux kernel too. He was trying to say that Windows is broken because it took so long for SP2 to be released. It took at least as long to get from the stable release 2.4 to 2.6 of the Linux kernel, so is that proof that 2.4 is broken? No.
Furthermore, he named no specific viruses, exploits in IE or anything else.

And you know this... How? Oh wait, let me guess, you read it on slashdot, so it must be true...

If it's so easy, then how come there aren't any provably safe/correct OSes in existance? The only provably correct software I am aware of run a few critical functions for orginizations that can afford the development: nuclear reactor computers, some of NASA's software. Nothing even approaching the complexity of Windows or Linux have even been attempted. Information is hard to link to because you have to pay for it. See http://archive.comlab.ox.ac.uk/procos/codesign.htm l, http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/lin91provably.html, http://csd.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/persons/ste phan.kleuker/s-kleuker.hti-abstracts.html.

No, he's not saying the Linux kernel is invulnerable. Far from it. He's saying Windows has far more vulnerabilities. No study necessary. Unless you're a total Microsoft Zealot, you should be able to see that as plain as day.

He specifically said the "heart" of Linux: I can only assume he is referring to the kernel. You've avoided that point entirely. The Windows kernel has equal or less vulnerabilities than the Linux kernel does. I dare you to name even one recent one that allows privlege escilation in SP2. Here is one in 2.6.0, and another in 2.6.6... Just ask Google

So you are saying that your position is so obvious and such common knowledge that you cannot find any support for it? That's called doublethink. If it was obvious, you should be able to provide copious, valid, fair and detailed sources to support your position. Stating that it's obvious without any support at all, as I posted earlier, destroys your credibility. No one is going to believe you just because you say it's true. That's the main problem I had with E-Rock-23, and now you.

Back off him, he does have a good point.

A point cannot be any good without support. He stated his case with zero references of any kind.

Besides, you're the one who posted anonymously

1. I don't see a name at the top of your post
2. What makes you think that's why I posted AC?
3. If your threshold is so high, how did you see the grandparent?

If you want hard data, just search Slashdot's archives.

Yeah, because if it's on SlashDot, it has to be true. And detailed. It's not like just anyone can post.

Hell, it was even said that it broke MS' own software in some cases. Vague, yes. Unsupported, well, find that out for yourself

Oh really? Surely you could provide a link to this, to provide the required support for this claim? "find that out for yourself"? Don't you know already? Can't you afford to spread the 'truth', direct from your sources in all its detailed glory?

because I'm SURE I read that somewhere online, and it's not just on a personal opinion blog or similar, but on /. or similar.

Oh, since you are so sure that you read it... somewhere... online, it simply has to be true, absolutely.
Yes, as I listed in an earlier post, there are a great number of others that share the same baseless position that you do. The quantity of people that believe something has nothing to do with its truth.

Here's my beef: Why did Microsoft wait so damn long to release SP2? Because, as they claimed, they wanted to make sure it was as comprehensive as possible. They wanted to more or less make it as close to a cure-all as they could. They took their sweet time, while virii and such ran rampant, exploiting the holes SP2 was meant to fix while they still could. I'm sure a side by side look at virii v. SP2 release timelines will show that. [...] But why would they NEED to release something as major as SP2? Could it be because their code is SEVERELY FLAWED?

Let's try a fill-in-the blank. Replace each instance of SP2 with the Linux kernel version 2.6.
The timeline is not proof of anything. There are a million major influences on a project's timeline.

Why is Microsoft knowingly releasing severely flawed software that jeopardizes a user's entire hard drive? Don't you think that, instead of hurrying an OS to market, they'd make sure it is at least as secure as possible? Why are these flaws being found and exploited so quickly?

Because producing provably correct code with the complexity of Windows would take centuries and trillions of dollars. This is not practical. Microsoft is a corporation; the point of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders, a task that MS is succeeding at beautifully.

When you think about how most of the machines out there are home machines with average citizens using them, and you figure that about half of those average citizens are completely computer inept and couldn't tell SP2 from T2:Judgment Day, that gets to be a pretty big problem, wouldn't you say?

Microsoft is not at fault for creating stupid people. They existed long before MS and will continue to for a very long time. The people at fault, as you state so clearly, are the people that are too stupid and incompetent to own a computer. What would you have Microsoft do to defeat the age old enemies of ignorance and apathy? I'm sorry, but Linux or any OS for that matter, are not immune to stupidity either. That day will probably never come.

Linux is free, and is maintained by a loose-knit band of geeks from around the world.

This is relevant, how?

It takes some serious geek code to invade and exploit Linux at it's heart. It takes a script you download from a "l33t h4x0r 5|t3" to exploit and abuse the things that Microsoft says makes things oh so much easier for the user.

So you are saying that the Linux kernel itself (the heart) is nearly invulnerable while Windows NT's heart (it's kernel) is full of holes, and that Linux has no ez-bake rootkits?
Care to name even one Windows kernel vuln that allows privilege escalation since Windows 2000 gold?

You want something more substantial than a "vague and unsupported claim?" You got it, bucco. Lick my pale Irish ass. And yes, I

"obviously, not in the college YOU came from, looking at the dull-as-a-snail brain that you have"

Enjoy the personal attacks, do you?

Sorry I don't have links to disprove ad-hominem attacks.

Oh wait, I do.

I'm not sure about stupid, but ignorant might be true. Fortunately the latter can be remedied, and you should start with the slippery slope fallacy.

In addition, I can think of plenty of decent reasons not to want a Mac, but constructing fanciful scenarios regarding Apple's behavior in bizarro world is the worst I've ever read.

Your entire argument is based on the Red Herring that I am discussing how murder applies to chewing gum.

We are discussing how useage with illegal intent compares with a usage with legal intent.

To clarify:

Chewing gum with a legal intent is to chew gum to exercise the jaw and enjoy the gum's flavour and consistency with regards to accepted local mannerisms. When finished with said gum it is safely deposited in the trash.

Chewing gum with an illegal intent (in Singapore) is to chew said gum as above, but to either not follow accepted mannerisms when masticating, or to improperly dispose of said gum.

The results of said illegal activities are to deface, as that article suggests, an entire country and thereby leave millions of people in Singapore disgusted with their country's appearance. Such illegal activities are rumoured to happen in the billions in a population of this size, and cause long term and permanent damage, and are rumoured to continue should the ban be lifted, and may even be continuing illicitly as we speak.

On the topic of box cutters in airlines:

A legal intent with a box cutter on an airline might be to open a package, or it may be a tool one normally uses in one's day to day legal work.

An illegal intent with a box cutter on an airline would be the use of such an item to hijack the flight.

The result of that illegal acitivity is to deface a city, emotionally harm millions, and kill thousands. This illegal activity is known to have occurred once, perhaps twice, and is extremely unlikely to recurr, meaning a future without such illegal activity is forseeable.

While the results are not the same, the fact remains that I am certain I could find a way to use most any item illegally, and that to ban items simply because they have an illegal use leads to a world without items. Even items traditionally considered wholesome in nature can be used in an illegal manner, for example spaghetti (watch Se7en). To follow the trend of banning items due to their even single-time illegal use would mean to ban spaghetti from the world. I like spaghetti. Don't take it from me.

Which begs the question:

No it doesn't

It is true that many people use the phrase the way you did, but it makes one look uneducated.

As much as I dislike starting an argument with a logical fallacy, you should really look at the article a bit before making any claims as to the death of MP3.

First of all the article page loads with the title "MSN Tech & Gadgets". This is noteworthy, especially seeing as how MS is trying to break into this market. Of course they'd say MP3 is dead, especially when they're touting a DRM enabled propriatary format.

Also, we have this gem from the article:

According to researchers at The NPD Group's MusicWatch Digital who track the contents of people's hard drives, the percentage of MP3-formatted songs in digital-music collections has slid steadily in recent months, down to about 72 percent of people's collections from about 82 percent a year ago.

Aside from this being really creepy, it's a biased sample. Anyone who would let someone put monitoring software on their PC (assuming it's not spyware) would probably not have a lot of MP3 files on their machine, if you know what I mean *nudge nudge*.

To sum up: Article is bogus advertising spin. Nothing to see here, move along.

As much as I dislike starting an argument with a logical fallacy, you should really look at the article a bit before making any claims as to the death of MP3.

First of all the article page loads with the title "MSN Tech & Gadgets". This is noteworthy, especially seeing as how MS is trying to break into this market. Of course they'd say MP3 is dead, especially when they're touting a DRM enabled propriatary format.

Also, we have this gem from the article:

According to researchers at The NPD Group's MusicWatch Digital who track the contents of people's hard drives, the percentage of MP3-formatted songs in digital-music collections has slid steadily in recent months, down to about 72 percent of people's collections from about 82 percent a year ago.

Aside from this being really creepy, it's a biased sample. Anyone who would let someone put monitoring software on their PC (assuming it's not spyware) would probably not have a lot of MP3 files on their machine, if you know what I mean *nudge nudge*.

To sum up: Article is bogus advertising spin. Nothing to see here, move along.

I would defend them, and you know why? They created my job...

Fallacy of appealing to consequences. Sorry, you can't defend something odious by pointing to one benefit among many unspoken ills. Would you then defend crime, saying that it creates many law-enforcement jobs? I have heard people do so.

...they are easy to overcome...

You also cannot defend something by appealing to scarcity of consequences. Mad cow disease afflicts extremely few people, which makes it a minor problem. But it does not cease to be a problem.

...and they simply do not [a]ffect the majority of bright individuals that use the net.

A good ISP is going to do egress filtering to prevent the first four items from having any impact (save adware, which may open popups). A good OS is not going to let the first four even get installed.

Prejudicial language. Anonymous authority. You are exonerating the perpetrator by blaming the victim. If only users had the right ISP and the right OS and enough brains, malware wouldn't be a problem! If only immigrants could speak English and get educated, they wouldn't be exploited! Clearly, such issues are not worth fixing.

Fake ATM theft is a scam, pure and simple. What you're saying is not to punish the people responsible for doing the actual crime, you're saying the creator of the ATM (or the card reader) is responsible. And that's ridiculous. The person that actually commits the crime has the intent, not the person that creates the tool.

Strawman. I made no statements about punishment. I made no statements about perpetrators' intentions. I did not even make any statements about tools. I did, however, make statements about the intentions of tool-creators. It is not in doubt that the tool-creator commits no crime. It is also irrelevant, because the issue here is whether he can be considered ethically -- not legally -- innocent for (1) creating a tool that's expressly designed, i.e., intended, to commit a crime, (2) for the express purpose of selling the tool to (3) people who expressly intend to commit that crime.

You have no guaranteed right to privacy. It's a derived right, and a weak one at that. After all, oh I'm safe from something like SPAM [...] but I'm not safe from the government databases or FBI, CIA, NSA, wiretaps and survelliance.

Red herring. Are you really claiming that because we are not "safe" (your word) from the FBI, we should not be safe from spammers and spyware? These things are unrelated. You may as well say that there's no sense locking my car to keep the neighborhood kids out, because someday a professional thief might show up.

Besides which, bringing up privacy is putting words in my mouth, as I didn't say what right I was referring to. I do not consider spam an invasion of privacy. It is deceptive trespass, no different from a solicitor dressed as a postal carrier.

--
Dum de dum.

"Begging the question" does not mean taking something for granted. It means taking something for granted in order to prove the "something". In other words, circular logic. So, no, you don't know what begging the question is.

One Canadian site, Nizkor, documents (and refutes) the claims of holocaust deniers. In documenting the claims, they might fall afoul of the act (I've not read it yet), even though that is the exact opposite of their intent.

Using a premise that can only proved by your conclusion is a fallacy. It certainly cannot make for a valid argument for anything. Just like the grand-parent said, it's a circular reasoning...

This is not insightful, this is an appeal to ridicule and an appeal to belief.

Your approximation of reality does not have a god. Mine does. No one knows what reality actually holds.

And your belief is an appeal to ignorance.

This is not insightful, this is an appeal to ridicule and an appeal to belief.

Your approximation of reality does not have a god. Mine does. No one knows what reality actually holds.

This is not insightful, this is an appeal to ridicule and an appeal to belief.

Your approximation of reality does not have a god. Mine does. No one knows what reality actually holds.

Seems to be a false dilemma. Why can't they build the wall at the agreed upon border? How would that be less effective at preserving life?

How do you know Israel has nukes, because Vanunu said so?

That he was convicted of treason and espionage after claiming so gives some credence. It also appears psychologically consistent for them to have desired nuclear weapons capability, and they did have a nuclear power facility. Means, motive, probable opportunity, and one eyewitness. A second eyewitness would be conclusive. This is (merely) highly suggestive.

Your points are fairly sound, otherwise.

You fail it, where it is presenting a valid counter-argument.

In 1992, the Libertarian Party got 0.28% of the popular vote; in 1996, it got 0.50% of the popular vote; and in 2000, it got 0.36% of the vote. They did get 1.1% of the electorate in 1980, but that's the highest percentage win I see on record. With that consistently low showing, they can't honestly be mounting each candidate's campaign expecting an honest-to-God win.

Assuming the same, the question then becomes: (a) do they have a long-term strategy to increase those votes, and (b) what are the corollary goals they hold to accomplish during a Presidential run, since winning the election is a longshot?

You're taking my question regarding (a) and interpreting it as "how are you going to change yourselves to increase those votes." That speaks more to your interpretation of their position than to mine. The (a) part could just as easily be interpreted as "how are you going to change the electorate," or "how are you going to change the awareness of the electorate," or a number of other different ways. I leave it to the candidate to interpret the original question as he sees fit. You twit.

Yes, because we all know how effective bans on Nazi paraphenalia have been at getting rid of the ideas.

the war was to shut down Iraq as a haven for terrorists, and to remove the growing, but not yet imminent threat Saddam was posing to America.

The threat was growing, but not imminent, you say -- but in your previous post you've claimed he had the WMDs, and that they must be somewhere, and that it really scares you. How baldly, and badly, have you just contradicted yourself? Um, utterly?

And again, even on your own terms: "the war was to shut down Iraq as a haven for terrorists"?? Gee, uh... Sure has worked great. Oops, time to resort to "We made Iraq a honey pot for terrorists so as to fight them there rather than at home, that's the 'front line' now." You seem incapable of tracking just how mutually contradictory your own statements are, so I'm sure you can trot that one out and not see how completely it vitiates everything else you've said. (I guess there's no need to mention how the war was fought in ways that didn't seem to keep Ansar al-Islam in Iraq anyway. Yeah, they sure were worried about those terrorists. So worried that the terrorists seem to have neatly skipped the country while we were conducting an armored assault on Baghdad.)

Definition:"The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position." You, friend, substituted a ridiculous version of the parent's post, claiming that he was saying Saddam had changed his ways. This wasn't the claim being made. That's what's called a straw man. Maybe you think it was ironic, but golly, you sure seem to have promptly argued against the caricature, so how were you using it again? As a straw man. You might have wanted to look that up.

Just for good measure, you explain how thoughtfully Reagan undertook a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" forgeign policy -- the results of which we are currently dealing with. You do a truly execrable job of defending these policies. Now, think hard... Think about Pakistan: nuclear power, huge radicalized muslim population, repeated assassination attempts against Musharraf, Bush in 2000 saying that he thought the coup that brought Musharraf to power was "good for stability in the region" despite its having overthrown an elected regime. Longtime supporters of the Taliban. Does this remind you of any whose names have four letters and start with "Ira"? Oh, well -- the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I guess.

Try looking at my sig. Eisenhower's among my favorite Presidents, and you're accusing me of being a Democratic propagandist. Unreal.

That's what they said about lemmings--they would not choose to die, so it must be in their nature!

As it turns out, all the lemmings were jumping off the cliffs because they were being chased by the National Geographic helicopter filming them.

In any case, more to the point, your argument above is just stupid (not to cause a flame war). But it is, I'm sorry. Burden of proof is a known logic fallacy that you're employing in your argument. Go ahead, click the link.

Talking out of *his* ass? Why don't you stop using red herrings, retard. The grandparent is comparing Britain to its own history -- NOT Britain to America.

Britain's gun crime rate has risen since its handgun ban. That is a comparison of Britain to itself; nowhere is America mentioned, because America is irrelevant to the claim.

Thus, Britain's *rate* of gun crime is rising (positively-sloped, but a negative to British society). This again, is a comparison of Britain to itself, and nowhere is America relevant to the argument.

Admit it, the law has backfired and the grandparent provided several very-credible sources showing this is true. Like the NRA famously claims, "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." Britain is learning this the hard, violent, bloody way. That's what you get for trusting the big British government...

But why would any Jews have survived after reaching the camps, let alone survived long enough to be rescued, if the camps were actually designed specifically to kill groups of people together and suddenly? Why would they build sneaky devices to kill people with when they could kill them simply by failing to provide adaquately for them?

The Nazi death machine was primarily limited by the rate they could cremate bodies, and secondarily by transportation. They switched over from simply mistreating the prisoners and waiting for them to die to transporting people to centralized death camps where they could be executed and creamated in batches because it was less expensive and labor intensive.

The Nizkor Project does and excellent job of explaining the practical justification for the strange seeming behavior and refuting the major misconceptions about the Holocaust.

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10 out of 10 Terrorists agree - Anybody but Bush in 2004

That makes all those who support anybody but Bush in league with the terrorists - Good fallacy.