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Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology
El Reg writes "Showing a new-found resolve to crack down on self-serving edits, Wikipedia has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology. According to Wikipedia administrators, this marks the first time such a high-profile organization has been banished for allegedly pushing its own agenda on the 'free encyclopedia anyone can edit.'"
Tor was simply an "off-the-top-of-the-head" example. There are many ways to obscure your IP.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
That's interesting. Chomsky himself only believes in freedom of expression for people whose beliefs he supports. This man is a never-ending source of irony (oh the ironing is delicious!).
"Religions differ in the demands they make on parishioners and in the control exerted on them"
You mean like asking you to go to war, kill and die over some stupid historic dispute or humanly-interpreted divine-plan? Not that I'd want to choose one, but so far I'm not aware of any acts of violence carried out in the name of Scientology.. Can't say the same about the big-three.
-Michael
Liberals have a well known liberal bias. Reality is too complicated to be pithy.
Hassan distinguishes between what he terms as destructive cults and benign cults. A destructive cult, according to Hassan, has a "pyramid-shaped authoritarian regime with a person or group of people that have dictatorial control." and "uses deception in recruiting new members." In contrast, benign cults are, according to Hassan, "any group of people who have a set of beliefs and rituals that are non-mainstream."
So if a cult goes murdering people it may be benign as long as it is not mainstream?
These are not mutually exclusive characteristics. Does it mean a benign cult can be also destructive without being incoherent?
Clarkkent09, I think this Hassan is who is actually confused.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
That may once have been the case, but how it's far from it.
RIP wikipedia, we miss you.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
That does seem to be the line they're giving out these days. Trouble is, of course, that when the OT3 documents leaked, the cult sued for _copyright infringement_ - if it had been a pack of lies made up by their enemies out of malice, then they should have sued for _libel_. We can be pretty damn sure, from the ferocity with which the cult defended their ownership, that OT3 was genuine.
You also occasionally hear that the Xenu story is part of older mythology, and isn't really taught now - that the cult has shunted the space opera into the background, much like most Christians do with the more blatantly silly parts of Genesis. That might be true. It's also pretty fucking impressive: to ditch embarrassing doctrines almost before the messiah's body has cooled? That's quick work.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Eventually people will learn to ignore that liar.
How? As long as there is no banner on the Scientology page (in WP, I mean) explaining this, then how are people to know? Most folks don't really do background checks on most things, now do they?
I for one thank wikipedia to use their stance and point out that this shit is not tolerable. Next up, christianity, islam, judaism. Way to go wiki.
Good going. Let's sqash those damn religions! What good have they ever done for us? Let's ban them all, so free speech is guaranteed for everyone who deserves it.
Tor's exit IPs also all have a domain name ending with "tor.net". Simply implement a ban on "tor.net" and you're blocking all of Tor, even new IPs that they add to the network.
Tor doesn't hide the fact that it's an anonymizer, nor does it try to make it difficult to prevent its use on websites. It simply provides a service to its users. But Tor's ToS do say pretty clearly that the service is not to be used to abuse the services of others (not that it stops anybody), and to help prevent such abuses, they make it pretty easy to block.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
This is what gets a '5 Insightful' nowadays: complete and utter bull****?
For those of you wondering, ALL religions fall under the following definition of 'cult' (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult):
"a great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work"
I'll leave as an exercise for the reader to figure out why.
Do your research, or, at a minimum, try to understand what the words you use mean before you use them.
also allow freedom of expression
but scientology, as well as many other governments and religions, are openly hostile to free expression. this means the chomsky quote no longer applies
for example: i have no problem with a homophobic racist expressing their views, as long as they don't also attempt to silence nonhomophobic nonracists. as soon as they do, all bets are off
to express it logically: tolerance is not the same as tolerance of intolerance. in fact, if you tolerate intolerance, by proxy you are extending intolerance. logically, if you believe in tolerance, you must be intolerant of intolerance
for example: "i am muslim"
you must tolerate that
"i hate christians"
you must not tolerate that, in the name of tolerance
the concept of tolerance does not extend to intolerant beliefs. out of pure logic
many conservatives talk about the hypocrisy of leftists who are intolerant of conservative viewpoints while leftists demand more tolerance in this world. but this logically incoherent, since many viewpoints of conservatives, such as homophobia and ethnocentrism, are by logical definition intolerant beliefs, and, according to the principle of tolerance, must not be tolerated
its all about logical coherence. and plenty of times, you must, out of simple logical consistency, not tolerate intolerant belief systems
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it