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Yahoo! Bans "Allah" in Screen Names
szembek writes "According to The Register it seems that Yahoo! is banning the use of the string "Allah" in all screen names. The issue apparently became apparent when Linda Callahan attempted to use her surname in her screen name. The following link has an interesting list of terms that Yahoo does allow, and ones they don't."
Is apparently allowed though.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I've run into problems with my last name ("Marcum") due to the last three characters.
It's still not as bad as Blizzard's, filtering out words like "basement".
Ignoring the whole political issue of it, if they are going to filter a string, they should at least allow common legit strings that it is a substring of.
ConsultingFair.com
The whole point of writing articles like this is so people WILL stop using their services. If no one bitched, most people wouldn't know about it.
I read this article yesterday, and it's sad, really, that nazipedophilesodomyisgreat@yahoo.com is allowed, but nancycallahan@yahoo.com is not. It's an example of an idea that probably started as a noble concern. (I would imagine that someone tried to sign up for deathtoallah@yahoo.com in order to troll on a forum somewhere.) But in the processm you come up with something that is really unsolvable. The solution here seems to be that you ban the 7 naughty words (as determined by the FCC) throw in a couple obvious ones (administrator, security, etc.) and leave it at that. If you try to ban certain words, there is way too much grey area. Do you ban the word breast? How about the Yahoo ID breastcancerawareness or chickenbreast? There are just a few areas in life where a couple simple rules won't solve the problem. I am well aware that even banning the 7 naughty words isn't enough, (I could sign up for fuuckme@yahoo.com, and people would understand what I'm getting at.) but that's really as far as you can take it.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Sad part of Yahoo! (got to remember the exclamation point!) buckling under like most of the western media over Mohammed cartoons is that it shows to terrorists and their lackeys is that terror as a political tools works. It's not kooky right wing christians that are the biggest threat to our freedom of speech. It's fundamentalist Islam that seeks to regulate western speech with threats of violence from the middle east.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I had a run in with the filters before. I usually use stripe or stripe7 as my handle even in games that I play online. On Shattered Galaxy [www.sgalaxy.com], I used to go by stripe in their 2-3 years of beta. Then when they went commercial, I found out that it was a banned name! Turns out anything with strip in it was banned. Similarly Grape gets banned because it had rape in it. What gets banned is getting rediculous. What next? Banning capital A because it might be used to spell Allah? What about local slang, Randy is a common name I see in the US. In the UK it's slang for someone who is sexually excited. Does that mean all Randy's are soon to be banned in the UK? or worldwide?
I'm all against trials of writers and so-called revisionnists, because I don't believe in state imposed truth : a truth you can't debate is a myth in the full, dictionary, sense of the word. Those morons desserve to be laughed at, not sent to jail.
This said, your comparison is fallacious, because you're mixing two completely different things :
Therefore, by siding religious feelings and historical facts, you're fuelling the arguments or religious zealots willing to enforce their own myth as a state-held truth, and / or justifying racism toward those holding beliefs we don't share because they're holding a supposed "truth" we don't believe in. Both moves being equally dangerous.
Oh all the Muslim-bashers and Islamophobes are going to come out of the woodwork
And so will all the dhimmis.
I am a gay man and an atheist who has no intention of following any superstitious belief, Islam included.
The penalty for homosexuality under Shari'a (Islamic law) is death. I learned this from a discussion I had with a muslim from whyislam.org.
I am also an adoptive parent. Shari'a does not recognize adoptive parents. I learned this from the same discussion.
It is permittable for a Muslim to lie to a Kuffar (unbeliever). This is called taqiyya.
The belief that "Islam will dominate the world" is a mainstream belief in Islam. Not an extremist belief, a mainstream belief.
When the editor of Southern Voice (a gay newspaper in the Southeast USA) traveled to Amsterdam, supposedly a "liberal" city, he was gay-bashed and suffered injuries. The perpetrators? Muslims who were following their religious beliefs.
So when you start accusing people like me of having "islamophobic" sentiments, I have to agree and indicate to you that your accusation sounds a lot like, "She deserved to be raped. Didn't you see the skirt she was wearing?"
There are legitimate reasons for both fearing and resisting Islam. The hatred of freedom of expression, the denigration of gays and women, the 7th-century mindset, the second-class status imposed on non-Muslims (dhimmis), and the punitive justice system are all elements of mainstream (NOT "extremist") Islam that need to be discussed, exposed, and resisted. Not apologized for and certainly not defended in the name of "multiculturalism" or anything else!
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Christians don't threaten death to company executives or members of the press if they disagree with their opinions.
You don't know anything about US abortion clinics do you?
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Is there any doubt that we have lost the war on terror? should we even bother fighting it anymore? We repeatedly show these extremist nutcases that they can get whatever it is they want by terrorizing us. Every article about these ridiculous cartoons on CNN.com ends with a disclaimer: CNN has chosen not to reprint the cartoons out of repect for Islam when all I can read is CNN has chosen not to reprint the cartoons out of fear of getting firebombed proof that we have lost: Yeah, Osama may be on the run in remote areas of Pakistan & Afghanistan, but it takes me 40 mins to get through security at the airport, and I have to have my personal belongings searched to ride the subway.
Avoiding the "trolls and hatemongers" is, like it or not, completely against the concept of freedom of expression.
Freedom of expression very often involves ideas which many may find "offensive". That's just part of the game. To try to filter out that which is "hate" is a pathetically useless exercise, and inherently against liberty.
Yahoo!, if not the entire Western world, must make a decision soon. Either they will have to fully support freedom of expression, or fully disregard it. Of course, disregarding it would basically mean an end to what has allowed Western civilization to progress over the past few centuries.
This mixing of some freedom of expression here and there, if you say the "right" things, but none for people saying the "wrong" things, will only lead to strife.
Anyone who truly supports such ideals as freedom of expression and freedom of speech must be willing to accept that there will be people who speak out against Islam. There will be people who speak out against Christianity. There will be people who speak out against fish and chips. And if you really do appreciate freedom, then you will not only accept the right of such people to make their points known, no matter how much you disagree with them, but you will actively encourage them to express themselves. That is true freedom, my friend. Self-sustaining freedom.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Now we see how perfectly compatible is fascism with theocracy. Corporations will do whatever is necessary to enforce religious laws to protect their profits. When the international currency, oil, is controlled by theocrats (Christian, Muslim or otherwise makes little difference), corporate lawmakers will enact those laws, or enforce them privately.
--
make install -not war
4 words: Innocent until proven guilty.
Peaceful assembly and demonstration is a key and integral part of a democracy. When the guv removes people who oppose their views we have arrived at a police state.
Regardless of what you think of Bush and regardless of what you think of them protestors we must all protect the rights of the protestors to have their say: The famous quote often attributed to Voltaire, that "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" seems as relevant now as it ever did.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Just FFT.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Is there any doubt that we have lost the war on terror?
Well put it this way...
WWII: 1941-1945
War On Terror: 2001-2006(+)
If we can defeat two of the most powerful nations on earth in 4 years, but can't beat a handful of men in 5 years, then we are doing pretty badly as a nation.
If I hear the words "War On Terror" in 2011 out of a politicians mouth, I'm going to very pissed.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If you think there is a continuum then you do not understand the question. It is wrong to kill babies. It is wrong to deprive women of freedom of choice over their own bodies and subject them to a painful pregnancy for any reason but the welfare of others. Thus, taking the middle ground is to acknowledge that one or both of these injustices are happening.
There are people who are willing to stand by to see these injustices happen, but those are cynical, apathetic people who are of a lower moral character than abortion doctors and those who murder abortion doctors because both these groups are doing what is right in their own reasoning. Don't you see? abortion is the greatest debate in history because to a religious person, or a secular humanist or anyone else, life is sacred. You cannot say that there is part of a life in a woman's womb, you cannot redefine life though existential debate for that is denying your own existence and your own right to life.
To allow abortion in certain cases and deny it in others is to acknowledge abortion as the slaughter of the innocent and as a woman's right. Thus in the cases where it is denied, you are forcing a woman into having her life changed by an unwanted child for no reason but your bossy authoritarian and when abortion is granted you are killing a human that has done nothing to deserve it.
In the US today, abortion is legal, yet when you accidentally terminate a wanted pregnancy through negligent driving it is considered manslaughter. This inconsistency leads to only one conclusion: a fetus is human if and only if its mother wants it. If this is about the beginnings of humanity, how can we not extrapolate this nihilist world view into our own lives? Am I only human because my mother and others continue to love me?
There is no middle ground when talking about what is life, it didn't work for Plato, Descartes or Wittgenstein who are all people smarter than you that have tried to define humanity and it won't work for me. The abortion debate should be thought through by each one of us, because it goes beyond choice or killing babies, it cuts to the very core of each one of our existences. The politically correct middle ground might be the safest option, but most great questions, the middle ground between two extremes is the only one that can be conclusively proved to be wrong.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Hmm.
I like most of your post.
But it seems to me that the extremes are easier to prove conclusively wrong.
i.e.
Abortion is illegal under ANY circumstances.
Okay the mother AND the child will die when she is about 7 months pregnant.
Abortion is legal under ANY circumstances.
Okay we are killing an 8 month old baby that could survive outside the womb.
So the middle ground must be where the correct answer lies or there may be -no- correct answer. Heads you lose, Tails you lose.
If you get down to it, even if you use birth control prevent the union of sperm and egg that would have occured- you just prevented a human life. Maybe not violently but just as surely as if you had aborted it at 8 months.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The key difference between Christian fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists right now is that Christain fundamentalists typically have a pretty decent quality of life, and Islamic fundamentalists don't.[...]If you took all of the wealth in the US and Europe and handed it over to the Middle East, I have a feeling that you'd soon see an awful lot of poor, desperate, angry Christians burning flags in the street while a bunch of well-fed, well-clothed Muslim families watched from their living rooms and wondered what in the hell could possibly make those Christian lunatics so rabid.
The wealth of the US and Europe is handed over every day to the Middle East. At about $60 a barrel. Many of your top-brand islamic fundamentalists their pockets with your money. In fact, the GDP per capita of Saudi Arabia is $12900, that is 13 times that of Mali ($1000), a peaceful stable secular democracy. The Malinese are (mostly) moslem, but very nonfundamentalist. If you want a poor Christian country, there is Malawi ($700). Comparably quiet.
No, being the haves or have nots doesn't seem to be the explanation. Try again.
wut. What war with spain? The last time the UK was at war with spain was, christ, the 18th century?
Yep, that's exactly right- there has been NO need for the UK to control Ireland since the 18th century. ALL of the rest has been human rights violations.
Ireland was never useful as a strategic property, unless you planned to invade the US or something.
Wrong. During the Reformation, when England went Protestant, a very real fear was that the Catholic Spanish Armada would use Catholic Ireland as a steping stone to attack England. To prevent that, Cornwall invaded Ireland, and used Scotish Presbyterian settlers to kick the Irish off their land. ALL of the "troubles" can be traced to that invasion.
And the IRA only fought over the north; the south, and vast majority, is completely free.
You don't think the IRA started in 1921 do you? No, they've been around since the 1700s.
And it still remains in UK hands, so the IRA didn't get what they wanted.
Actually, the UK is negotiating a date to hand it over- and the IRA already got an election out of the deal.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.