That's a copy. The original artist still made all the important artistic decisions, the part that makes the art good. A new copy of the execution doesn't show the original is a "sham" in any way.
Michelangelo had great skill with a chisel and file, but that's not why he's a genius.
Even more interesting however was a man around the WW2 who make 'original' Vermeers, i.e. paintings which were not copies of existing paintings but were so good and a such a match to the style and quality that people believed they were (almost) real Vermeer works.
Even still, he was working in a plan and style defined and refined by Vermeer.
Your argument is that the paintings should be valued not because of who painted it, but because of the "important artistic decisions" that went into the execution of the painting.
Following your argument to its logical conclusion, once it was discovered that the Vermeer paintings were forgeries (i.e. not executed by Vermeer) but were so good that people believed it was painted by Vermeer (i.e. incorporating artistic decisions that were of Vermeer's style and quality) - should the forgery then not deserve to be priced the same as original Vermeer works? Since the forgeries achieved the same quality as Vermeer's true works?
Or should the price be affected by the fact that the "important artistic decisions" were made by someone other than Vermeer?
That is quite true. But to invoke the mandatory car analogy a well-heeled driving enthusiast might take several sports cars out for a test drive and choose the one that was immediately the most fun to drive, and a second just for variety. But after months of driving both might discover that, once having mastered the basics, the subtleties of the second actually make for a more enjoyable drive. This is actually not at all uncommon in driving games where players have massive fleets of different cars at their disposal.
A driver/player may well come to prefer a particular vehicle because the quirks of that vehicle are more suited towards his style of driving. Similarly, a violinist may prefer to play a particular instrument because the attributes of that particular violin suit his style of playing better.
In both these cases, it does not mean that the preferred car or violin is objectively superior to all other cars or violins. Subjectively, yes, but only for that particular driver or violinist who made that choice.
Oh come on, this study is bogus, the artcle said it was a double-blind study, but there is noway in hell that a violinist of sufficient skill to extract from a Cremonese violin anything close to it's potential, wouldn't know a 300 year old instrument the second they picked it up; this study neither proves or disproves anything.
On the contrary, it appears that you have allowed blind prejudice to cloud your judgement. The study did look into this point specifically, as follows from TFA:-
The violins were winnowed to six old and six new in a double-blind listening test judged by the soloists. Then, each of them donned dark goggles so they couldn’t distinguish the instruments by sight and tested out these top fiddles in two 55-minute sessions, one in a small room and one in a 300-seat auditorium. (Soloists could also play their own instruments for comparison.) After each session, the soloists picked his or her four favorites fiddles and rated them on scale of zero to 10 for qualities such as articulation, projection, and playability. Finally, after the second session, each subject had to guess whether instruments in a small selection that included some of their favorites were old or new.
The consistency of results from session to session showed that soloists could definitely distinguish one violin from another. However, the soloists seemed to prefer the new violins, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their lists of favorites, new violins outnumber old ones roughly 3-to-2, and the most popular violin by far was a new one, denoted N5. Musicians rated qualities of new instruments higher, too. And when it came to telling old violins from new, the soloists did no better than if they had simply guessed.
There may be other reasons to fault the study, but " noway in hell" is not a scientifically valid reason. It has about as much weight as "because I say so".
Right now, you can invent something and if it turns out to be "gold", you can milk it forever....That's supposed to spur innovation? Could someone show me how?
I agree with you, and its not. Copyright extension was a blatant cash grab engineered by a corrupt legislature to rob the public through the Mickey Mouse Act .
I suppose we should be thankful there is a limit of any kind. Actual quote:-
Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution.
In the analogy of a real mine it's like you're operating the mine in your backyard despite making a loss on doing so all so you can keep using the dollar. You wouldn't do it. Unless the mining process can break even or at least remain cheaper than paying interest or transaction fees at financial institutions then there's no point in being involved.
Aside from the cost issue, there's also the convenience/nuisance factor to consider. I think most people would have serious objections to having to purchase, maintain and run a miner just to be able to make payments compared to paying an intermediary like a bank fees to take care of transaction costs for them.
And that ABSOLUTELY doesn't happend with $$$$??? Like not even remotely as much as it happens to $$$? So far technically bitcoin has not been hacked or anything. All of problems happened with no specific relation of Bitcoin mechanism. Guess what, IRL currency get's manipulated much worse.
All this, unfortunately, is irrelevant. Bitcoin in itself has no inherent value. Its only value lies in what its users, and ultimately what the public perceives it to be worth. If I agree to accept 1 bitcoin from you in payment for goods worth USD$1, to both of us it is worth USD$1. If I refuse to accept any bitcoins in payment, to me it is worth nothing.
This brings me to the second point- all this widely reported scandals involving hacks, scams and failed exchanges is very, very bad for bitcoin. It does not matter where the failure lies- the general public will simply perceive bitcoin to be unsafe and hence refuse to accept or use bitcoins. Hence to the general public, bitcoin is worth nothing.
To be widely adopted, bitcoin has to prove that it is better than fiat currency and so far it is doing a terrible job. The failure of the ex-largest exchange, Mt. Gox is the cherry on top.
This was a studio film all along- the Kickstarter purposely misrepresented the situation.WB got suckers to use their money, with ZERO profit sharing, to finance a studio picture- a new low even for Hollywood.
You're an idiot. It was made clear on the the very first day that Warner Brothers was involved. Right there on the front page of the Kickstater, on day one. Warner agreed to pay for distribution and promotion if Rob Thomas could help fund the production budget and show fan interest in the film, and that is exactly what happened. Did WB screw up by forcing it through Flixster (guess who owns Flixster, btw), Yes, but they never lied about any aspect of the Kickstarter project.
So, WB was using the backers' money and let them assume the risk if the project fails. But if the project makes a profit WB gets it and not the backers. And you're saying the backers knew and agreed to assume all the risk and take none of the profit right from the start . Somehow, I don't think AC is the idiot here.
There is zero counterfeit bitcoin. You can't say the same about paper currency.
Technically correct, since bitcoin does not exist in physical form and therefore cannot be counterfeited in physical form.
But can transactions involving bitcoins be counterfeited? Most certainly!
Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, and other Bitcoin exchanges have temporarily suspended withdrawal transactions after coming under a form of a denial-of-service attack that abuses weaknesses in the way they keep track of fund balances, a security expert said.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos, chief security officer of digital wallet developer Blockchain, said the attacks work by flooding exchanges with a large number of malformed transactions that are similar, but not identical, to legitimate transactions that were already made. Exchanges that trust one or more of the fake records instead of the entries in the official Bitcoin blockchain quickly fall out of sync with the rest of the network and must recalculate their fund balances once the mistakes become apparent.
The net effect is the same. Counterfeit paper currency deprives its holders of the value of that currency. Counterfeit bitcoin transactions deprive the owners of the bitcoins involved in that transaction of the value of those bitcoins.
...except this was no different from someone doing the same thing to a bank. Your arguement is invalid
Except that the current banking system has failsafes to protect the depositor, even if the bank is at risk. For those who still use it, bank books and pass books record how much is in your bank account. Ditto for the monthly statements sent to depositors who have an electronic account, which is a hard copy in your hand. In many jurisdictions, these are legal evidence of a debt owed by the bank to you. Most banks are insured, both privately and by their respective governments.
If you are just a normal depositor stashing your cash in a bank account, you are much more likely to recover something in the event a bank is (electronically) robbed. Take for example the relatively recent collapse of Barings Bank - according to the Bank Of England Report on the Collapse of Barings, the interests of depositors and creditors were still protected although the bank was closed. Compare this with the uncertain fate of the Bitcoin depositors of Mt. Gox which just recently filed for bankruptcy.
The truth is that depositing funds in Bitcoins right now involves taking a substantial risk which is much higher than putting it into the current banking system. Deluding uninformed investors that investing in Bitcoins is "no different" from putting it in a bank is untrue and is likely to greatly harm the Bitcoin cause once these investors are burnt.
Don't understand how she's held as capable of holding to terms she's not legally compelled to honor.
That is a misunderstanding. Her parents were the ones bound by the contractual obligation, which they broke by telling their daughter who then told the world.
Since she was the focus of the case, hard to see how she'd not be told.
Her parents should not have agreed to settlements which they could not honor/keep. They could have inserted into the settlement agreement a stipulation that their daughter be told.
These "shut-up" congrats are vile; Scientology uses them to silence people they sue and harass. Then sometimes they keep harassing, but the victim is bound under insane penalties not to complain. And the non-ethics of business blames the victim for agreeing to terms.
This point is irrelevant as this case has nothing to do with Scientology. If you sign a contract agreeing to do something, you are contractually (and most people agree honor-bound) to carry it out. Why agree to a contract with "insane penalties" in the first place ?
Snay, however, immediately told his daughter that he’d settled and was happy with the results. He said in depositions that he and his wife knew they had to say something because she suffered “psychological scars” from issues during her enrollment at the school and was aware that they were in mediation with Gulliver attorneys.
There's so much spin and misinformation in above post.
It's not as simple as "data transfer" where peering agreements are involved. The fees you pay aren't there to allow Cogent to dump tons of data on one link of your ISP, forcing them to carry it on their backbone across the country to the end user there, rather than upgrading their own backbone to handle the traffic properly.
No, the fees you pay are for your ISP to provide a service, i.e. the transmission and delivery of digital content you choose over their network. And if you request Netflix to stream movies to you, your ISP by golly is contractually obliged to deliver that data to you . When Netflix/Cogent sends that data which you requested to your ISP, calling that transmission "dumping" is clearly 1. untrue and 2. BS.
That's exactly what they're doing. As Cogent dumps more traffic on them, they're just not upgrading the peering points, so Cogent customers see congestion and slowdowns going to/from other ISPs.
Not only Cogent customers. The customers of that ISP will also notice the slowdown . Take Verizon for instance. When/if Verizon refuses to upgrade peering points, all of Verizon's paying customers who use Netflix will be affected. So, what do you call failing to deliver a paid for service to your own customers?
Stop taking the ISP's side and look at the average consumer's point of view for once.
Yup, the government should step in when private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide essential services at a reasonable cost, the keywords being essential and reasonable.
The reverse sadly is true today. Local governments, likely under the influence of paid lobbyists working for existing corporate/telco interests, are actively writing laws to block the spread of broadband. Read for yourself the story of how the Kansas Legislature is trying to stop Google Fiber from expanding in Kansas.
"encourage the development and widespread use of technological advances in providing video, telecommunications and broadband services at competitive rates; and ensure that video, telecommunications and broadband services are each provided within a consistent, comprehensive and nondiscriminatory federal, state and local government framework."
Whatsapp is good enough, its strenght isn't security or privacy, but rather its comfort. You don't need to add anyone, no pins, usernames, passwords or logging in.
Very true. It stores your phone number and contact details in the cloud, which is very useful when you change phones. Just install the app on your new phone and boom! All your contacts are there.
At some point the issue of what's reasonable has to kick in. If she lost a VHS tape 9 years ago, and the store went under since then, (1) there's no victim, and (2) the replacement cost for the videotape is probably only a few dollars (check on eBay).
While I broadly agree that reasonableness has to be taken into consideration, I don't think that it's fair to say that there's no victim here simply because the store went under. I'm pretty certain that the store owner (and his partners, if any) for one will disagree with you- he was angry enough to file a police report. Also, applying your logic, all murders are victimless crimes since their victims are dead, which statement I think many people will find hard to agree with.
Software development is probably more like engineering and building a bridge. You need to compare with something where not everything is known at the outset.
So, it is not always true the builder fixes any problems on his own time and costs. In some cases, the client pays (hence the cost overruns) or if there is a dispute, a mess ensues as in the example above.
All search engines should just let all the search results show and let the user decide what he wants/ does not want to see with the use of filters, etc.
Any censorship of the results is clearly an attempt at mind control, a prime example being censoring all bad news relating to a country to make it come up smelling like roses.
In particular, if the door is unlocked, that doesn't mean you can walk into the building and take photocopies of everything you find there, then publish the documents.
This is a prime example of the misuse of analogies to try and equate things which are not the same.
How is clicking on an online link in any way similar to walking into a building? A building has walls purpose built to keep people out. In the case of this French website, what is your "wall"? And to stretch your faulty analogy further, if an area appears to be public land, are you not able to stroll around and take photographs?
I would strongly urge the management of Slashdot to take heed of the lessons taught by the fall of Digg after the 4.0 changes and the concurrent rise of Reddit, or for those who game online, the fall of Star Wars Galaxies after the forced introduction of the New Game Enhancements.
In short, forcing unwanted changes on your users is never a good idea. You risk losing your current user base who are happy with Slashdot the way it is. If your users wanted the more "polished" look you are now pushing, they could have gone to a multitude of other sites offering the very same thing.
The ultimate strategic goal for Bin Laden and his followers is a world of Muslims living under Sharia law. It is a long term goal to be sure. But getting the US out of Saudia Arabia and all the rest is just short term goals. Ultimately they want to see the US converted to Islam, and living under Sharia law. The language is somewhat stylized, in accordance with their religious nature, but fairly clear if you will see. The demand for conversion is pretty straightforward, and the call for Sharia only slightly diffused but you can see it - and it follows naturally from the conversion demand.
Beware the person who uses weasel words like "ultimately", "fairly clear" and "follows naturally". It means he's trying to pull a fast one. Beware also a poster who selectively cuts and pastes passages out of context to push his own agenda. I strongly recommend that anyone who has an interest in the matter to go read the full, unedited letter rather than rely on someone who is, as others have already pointed out, likely to be a paid government shill.
To show you the dangers of citing out of context, I point you to the following passage of the same letter:-
We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.
Doesn't that sound very much like what some of the bible belt conservatives in the US are pushing for? Can I then exclude everything else in the letter and based solely on that one passage, argue that the Osama group's ultimate goal is to turn America into a land of "manners, principles, honour, and purity"?
Because this manner of argument is exactly what the previous poster has done.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a copy. The original artist still made all the important artistic decisions, the part that makes the art good. A new copy of the execution doesn't show the original is a "sham" in any way.
Michelangelo had great skill with a chisel and file, but that's not why he's a genius.
Even more interesting however was a man around the WW2 who make 'original' Vermeers, i.e. paintings which were not copies of existing paintings but were so good and a such a match to the style and quality that people believed they were (almost) real Vermeer works.
Even still, he was working in a plan and style defined and refined by Vermeer.
Your argument is that the paintings should be valued not because of who painted it, but because of the "important artistic decisions" that went into the execution of the painting.
Following your argument to its logical conclusion, once it was discovered that the Vermeer paintings were forgeries (i.e. not executed by Vermeer) but were so good that people believed it was painted by Vermeer (i.e. incorporating artistic decisions that were of Vermeer's style and quality) - should the forgery then not deserve to be priced the same as original Vermeer works? Since the forgeries achieved the same quality as Vermeer's true works?
Or should the price be affected by the fact that the "important artistic decisions" were made by someone other than Vermeer?
That is quite true. But to invoke the mandatory car analogy a well-heeled driving enthusiast might take several sports cars out for a test drive and choose the one that was immediately the most fun to drive, and a second just for variety. But after months of driving both might discover that, once having mastered the basics, the subtleties of the second actually make for a more enjoyable drive. This is actually not at all uncommon in driving games where players have massive fleets of different cars at their disposal.
A driver/player may well come to prefer a particular vehicle because the quirks of that vehicle are more suited towards his style of driving. Similarly, a violinist may prefer to play a particular instrument because the attributes of that particular violin suit his style of playing better.
In both these cases, it does not mean that the preferred car or violin is objectively superior to all other cars or violins. Subjectively, yes, but only for that particular driver or violinist who made that choice.
Oh come on, this study is bogus, the artcle said it was a double-blind study, but there is noway in hell that a violinist of sufficient skill to extract from a Cremonese violin anything close to it's potential, wouldn't know a 300 year old instrument the second they picked it up; this study neither proves or disproves anything.
On the contrary, it appears that you have allowed blind prejudice to cloud your judgement. The study did look into this point specifically, as follows from TFA:-
There may be other reasons to fault the study, but " noway in hell" is not a scientifically valid reason. It has about as much weight as "because I say so".
Right now, you can invent something and if it turns out to be "gold", you can milk it forever. ...That's supposed to spur innovation? Could someone show me how?
I agree with you, and its not. Copyright extension was a blatant cash grab engineered by a corrupt legislature to rob the public through the Mickey Mouse Act .
I suppose we should be thankful there is a limit of any kind. Actual quote :-
In the analogy of a real mine it's like you're operating the mine in your backyard despite making a loss on doing so all so you can keep using the dollar. You wouldn't do it. Unless the mining process can break even or at least remain cheaper than paying interest or transaction fees at financial institutions then there's no point in being involved.
Aside from the cost issue, there's also the convenience/nuisance factor to consider. I think most people would have serious objections to having to purchase, maintain and run a miner just to be able to make payments compared to paying an intermediary like a bank fees to take care of transaction costs for them.
All this, unfortunately, is irrelevant. Bitcoin in itself has no inherent value. Its only value lies in what its users, and ultimately what the public perceives it to be worth. If I agree to accept 1 bitcoin from you in payment for goods worth USD$1, to both of us it is worth USD$1. If I refuse to accept any bitcoins in payment, to me it is worth nothing.
This brings me to the second point- all this widely reported scandals involving hacks, scams and failed exchanges is very, very bad for bitcoin. It does not matter where the failure lies- the general public will simply perceive bitcoin to be unsafe and hence refuse to accept or use bitcoins. Hence to the general public, bitcoin is worth nothing.
To be widely adopted, bitcoin has to prove that it is better than fiat currency and so far it is doing a terrible job. The failure of the ex-largest exchange, Mt. Gox is the cherry on top.
So, WB was using the backers' money and let them assume the risk if the project fails. But if the project makes a profit WB gets it and not the backers. And you're saying the backers knew and agreed to assume all the risk and take none of the profit right from the start . Somehow, I don't think AC is the idiot here.
I'm not the only one who thinks the fans were ripped off.
Worst part is, you guys aren't even getting the promised rewards, i.e. the digital download.
There is zero counterfeit bitcoin. You can't say the same about paper currency.
Technically correct, since bitcoin does not exist in physical form and therefore cannot be counterfeited in physical form.
But can transactions involving bitcoins be counterfeited? Most certainly!
The net effect is the same. Counterfeit paper currency deprives its holders of the value of that currency. Counterfeit bitcoin transactions deprive the owners of the bitcoins involved in that transaction of the value of those bitcoins.
...except this was no different from someone doing the same thing to a bank. Your arguement is invalid
Except that the current banking system has failsafes to protect the depositor, even if the bank is at risk. For those who still use it, bank books and pass books record how much is in your bank account. Ditto for the monthly statements sent to depositors who have an electronic account, which is a hard copy in your hand. In many jurisdictions, these are legal evidence of a debt owed by the bank to you. Most banks are insured, both privately and by their respective governments.
If you are just a normal depositor stashing your cash in a bank account, you are much more likely to recover something in the event a bank is (electronically) robbed. Take for example the relatively recent collapse of Barings Bank - according to the Bank Of England Report on the Collapse of Barings, the interests of depositors and creditors were still protected although the bank was closed. Compare this with the uncertain fate of the Bitcoin depositors of Mt. Gox which just recently filed for bankruptcy.
The truth is that depositing funds in Bitcoins right now involves taking a substantial risk which is much higher than putting it into the current banking system. Deluding uninformed investors that investing in Bitcoins is "no different" from putting it in a bank is untrue and is likely to greatly harm the Bitcoin cause once these investors are burnt.
To the "anonymous reader" who posted the main article : If you link to TFA, at least post the less misleading title it used:
Makes a world of difference. And yes, shame on you.
That is a misunderstanding. Her parents were the ones bound by the contractual obligation, which they broke by telling their daughter who then told the world.
Her parents should not have agreed to settlements which they could not honor/keep. They could have inserted into the settlement agreement a stipulation that their daughter be told.
This point is irrelevant as this case has nothing to do with Scientology. If you sign a contract agreeing to do something, you are contractually (and most people agree honor-bound) to carry it out. Why agree to a contract with "insane penalties" in the first place ?
Read the article.
Man flaps mouth, man loses money.
There's so much spin and misinformation in above post.
No, the fees you pay are for your ISP to provide a service, i.e. the transmission and delivery of digital content you choose over their network. And if you request Netflix to stream movies to you, your ISP by golly is contractually obliged to deliver that data to you . When Netflix/Cogent sends that data which you requested to your ISP, calling that transmission "dumping" is clearly 1. untrue and 2. BS.
Not only Cogent customers. The customers of that ISP will also notice the slowdown . Take Verizon for instance. When/if Verizon refuses to upgrade peering points, all of Verizon's paying customers who use Netflix will be affected. So, what do you call failing to deliver a paid for service to your own customers?
Stop taking the ISP's side and look at the average consumer's point of view for once.
Yup, the government should step in when private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide essential services at a reasonable cost, the keywords being essential and reasonable.
The reverse sadly is true today. Local governments, likely under the influence of paid lobbyists working for existing corporate/telco interests, are actively writing laws to block the spread of broadband. Read for yourself the story of how the Kansas Legislature is trying to stop Google Fiber from expanding in Kansas.
Best part is: the Senate bill states that the goal is to
"encourage the development and widespread use of technological advances in providing video, telecommunications and broadband services at competitive rates; and ensure that video, telecommunications and broadband services are each provided within a consistent, comprehensive and nondiscriminatory federal, state and local government framework."
And the other cable companies are free from NSA surveillance, is that what you're saying? Don't be naive. NSA has its fingers in ALL of them.
Heck, they're not even bothering with individual companies and are plugged right into the main trunk.
Whatsapp is good enough, its strenght isn't security or privacy, but rather its comfort. You don't need to add anyone, no pins, usernames, passwords or logging in.
Very true. It stores your phone number and contact details in the cloud, which is very useful when you change phones. Just install the app on your new phone and boom! All your contacts are there.
Ungodly Churn, almost nobody uses WhatsApp.
Perhaps in your part of the world, but outside of the US, Whatsapp is big in some countries. As in used by practically everyone kind of big.
Not all their users pay the $1 a year. Some of them get free renewals after their year is up, for instance.
At some point the issue of what's reasonable has to kick in. If she lost a VHS tape 9 years ago, and the store went under since then, (1) there's no victim, and (2) the replacement cost for the videotape is probably only a few dollars (check on eBay).
While I broadly agree that reasonableness has to be taken into consideration, I don't think that it's fair to say that there's no victim here simply because the store went under. I'm pretty certain that the store owner (and his partners, if any) for one will disagree with you- he was angry enough to file a police report. Also, applying your logic, all murders are victimless crimes since their victims are dead, which statement I think many people will find hard to agree with.
And now it's apparently alive again .
Software development is probably more like engineering and building a bridge. You need to compare with something where not everything is known at the outset.
Actually, there is a real life building analogy of the type you seek- large scale projects such as the expansion of the Panama Canal, which currently appears to have ground to a halt amidst massive cost overruns.
So, it is not always true the builder fixes any problems on his own time and costs. In some cases, the client pays (hence the cost overruns) or if there is a dispute, a mess ensues as in the example above.
All search engines should just let all the search results show and let the user decide what he wants/ does not want to see with the use of filters, etc.
Any censorship of the results is clearly an attempt at mind control, a prime example being censoring all bad news relating to a country to make it come up smelling like roses.
Yet another reason to avoid Bing like plague.
In particular, if the door is unlocked, that doesn't mean you can walk into the building and take photocopies of everything you find there, then publish the documents.
This is a prime example of the misuse of analogies to try and equate things which are not the same.
How is clicking on an online link in any way similar to walking into a building? A building has walls purpose built to keep people out. In the case of this French website, what is your "wall"? And to stretch your faulty analogy further, if an area appears to be public land, are you not able to stroll around and take photographs?
I would strongly urge the management of Slashdot to take heed of the lessons taught by the fall of Digg after the 4.0 changes and the concurrent rise of Reddit, or for those who game online, the fall of Star Wars Galaxies after the forced introduction of the New Game Enhancements.
In short, forcing unwanted changes on your users is never a good idea. You risk losing your current user base who are happy with Slashdot the way it is. If your users wanted the more "polished" look you are now pushing, they could have gone to a multitude of other sites offering the very same thing.
Beware the person who uses weasel words like "ultimately", "fairly clear" and "follows naturally". It means he's trying to pull a fast one. Beware also a poster who selectively cuts and pastes passages out of context to push his own agenda. I strongly recommend that anyone who has an interest in the matter to go read the full, unedited letter rather than rely on someone who is, as others have already pointed out, likely to be a paid government shill.
To show you the dangers of citing out of context, I point you to the following passage of the same letter :-
Doesn't that sound very much like what some of the bible belt conservatives in the US are pushing for? Can I then exclude everything else in the letter and based solely on that one passage, argue that the Osama group's ultimate goal is to turn America into a land of "manners, principles, honour, and purity"?
Because this manner of argument is exactly what the previous poster has done.