For example the press' constant insistence on discrediting her.
As for what she did indeed change (and I don't like some of these changes) : just look at her track record in her current role.
Obama's track record is one of extreme comformity and giving up at the first sign of trouble. It looks like one of his speeches : utterly prepared to create a certain aura around him. Not truthful, not smart, not even a misguided attempt at doing something, not something to actually make one iota of difference in the real world.
And, as I said before, he's a megalomaniac. He had to be *physically* restrained when he was criticized, forcibly held down by his campaign helpers. Can you imagine the shame that would bring if it were to happen in a real negotiation ? I can see the headlines now ("president of america restrained in loony bin for 5 hours by own bodyguards, Ahmadinejad went for a walk, conference had to be delayed for 8 hours to wait for the religious dictator to stop laughing").
And no, I wouldn't make any more cars with the dream of selling a hundred of them. I'd make a single car, show it off, and publish the blueprints in exchange for money. Then I'd start researching improvements and doing likewise with them. Alternatively, I could do commission work for modifications.
Blueprints in exchange for money ? Heyhey now, they can be duplicated FOR FREE. I thought you were PRO-piracy, not against it...
Information wants to be free, man ! So just give me those blueprints for free (and obviously you will provide the necessary support for free as well, since it's *YOUR* fault that I don't know what half the lines on your blueprint mean, and it's *YOUR* fault that if I make the drivetrain out of gingerbread that it doesn't work. Gingerbread was my genius stroke man ! Make it work) (the point I'm trying to make is that customers are like managers : I've swatted flies that were smarter than they are. Oh and people who pirate stuff do so out of an entitlement mentality (they "have a right to your stuff, your time,... etc")
Information wants to be free, man ! Don't hoard it all for yourself !
I like Hillary's tenacity. Not giving up is a quality, certainly in her case. And she's a woman, this is how she reacts under the rather extreme stress that the press is heaping on her.
I mean this woman can CHANGE things. I doubt she wants to (as opposed to Obama : I'm 100% sure he does not want to change things, in fact he'll fight to prevent it).
But if SHE wants to, stuff will happen. Even if she has to do it herself. She has not lost.
Allow me to quote Obama on a non-scripted instance (ie. what he really thinks as opposed to what he thinks you want to hear). This is the guy who is to run the American government ?
1.) Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech on Tuesday May 8th 2007, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died. The death toll was 11. Here's what he said exactly:
"In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died â" an entire town destroyed," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser.
â Marking the anniversary of the March 1965 "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Ala., Obama, speaking at a church, said his parents got together "because of what happened in Selma." Obama was born in 1961.
â Obama told Larry King on CNN -- asked about that anti-Hillary Rodham Clinton YouTube ad, a doctored version of a spot created for Apple computers -- "We don't have the technical capacity to create something like that."
â Obama, asked if homosexuality was immoral, in the wake of comments by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace, sidestepped the question. After pressure from gay groups, Obama issued a statement stating he did not agree with Pace "that homosexuality is immoral."
Cynicism is like terrorism? â One of Obama's stump lines is that the biggest obstacle he fights is not any of his rivals, it is cynicism. He used a variation of it during a reception he hosted at a conference here sponsored by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Displaying a tin ear, Obama said that one of the enemies is not "just terrorists" or "just Hezbollah" or "just Hamas" -- "it's also cynicism."
â The Tribune dug this up: Obama, in his memoir, Dreams of My Father, writes of a story in Life magazine that influenced him -- about a black man trying to bleach his skin white. No such article could be found in Life or Ebony.
Insider or outsider? â Another Obama stump line -- he said it again Tuesday morning to the Communications Workers of America here -- is that "I've been long enough in Washington to know that Washington needs to change." He is running against Washington yet his campaign is populated with political professionals who are Washington insiders.
â Obama's embrace of some rhetoric used by rival John Edwards is getting attention. Edwards, in a 2003 speech made for his first presidential run said, "I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change Washington."
Obama is a demagogue. He says what he thinks you want to hear. He listened to "white people are the devil" for 17 YEARS, every sunday (or so he claims).
THAT's what he thinks. Yes he can write speeches, that will change once (if) he gets elected. Then again, it will probably change sooner than that.
So you're basically saying that of the 90% blacks who vote for Obama, 40% are idiots, or at least the 25% who admitted to voting for Obama based on race ?
If you vote for Obama as a black (or a white) based ENTIRELY on race then you're a racist, sure as hell.
Obviously. Are we seriously considering changing these definition because they don't fit the "politics du jour". If 25% of blacks readily admit to being racists, that doesn't change the definition of racist. At all. And let's get one thing straight : if Obama were white, he wouldn't be in the running. That, by itself, is racist.
Yes it's fashionable to vote Obama. However he's stupid : he does NOT know how many united states there are (57 last time he was asked) then again he wants to attack Pakistan, perhaps he intends to make it a state ?
His ideas about "raising taxes because it's more fair" are beyond stupid even if you're a lefty (after all doing it like that will destroy government, not grow it).
And sorry to say this, but the guy is a serious megalomaniac. He's lost it twice, and that was among people who adored him. He had to be physically restrained on one occasion. Will he even be able to not physically hit Ahmadinejad, never mind convince him to calm it on the nuke program ? Every rational human knows that it can't be done.
Just now he claimed his uncle was a soviet, for some cheap war credit :
(it was Russia, Stalin to be exact, who liberated Aushwitz, did he mean to say his uncle killed people for Stalin ?)
He intends to select supreme court judges on one criterium : that they do NOT follow the law.
I mean how stupid can you get ? Bush has a few low points, and isn't much of a public speaker, but this guy is in danger of getting carted off to the isolation ward of a psychic clinic before the campaign ends.
America, constantly sending off Condoleeza Rice, and before that Colin Powell, to represent it oversees, does not need to prove to non-idiots that blacks can make it in America if they work for it. And there are more "non-whites" in the highest level of government, Gonzales, Chao. The American government is neither monolithic in faith, nor in color or ethnicity, so let's stop claiming it's racist. People will stop respecting you.
No American alive today ever had even a single black slave (except perhaps one who is primarily a middle-eastern muslim). Americans are NOT responsible for something that happened before their great-grandfathers were born, in fact it's Americans that are responsible for ending the (muslim) black slave trade at the beginning of the 20th century. Nobody blames Angela Merkel for the holocaust, and her father DID actually "participate". It's stupid.
I work for a company that has ONE white guy in the entire senior management structure. One. (I don't like him, but that's another issue, not that I truly think the other direction members are there to help me, but this guy's an idiot. Not the biggest idiot of the bunch, but he's my closest chef).
What are you, racist ? Not voting for a black man is obviously racist. Clinton is a woman, so they're giving her some leeway in politically-correct land.
But let's take a look at races, without prejudice : -> Race A votes 91-9 for the candidate of the same race (and 25% admit that they only did soe because of race) -> Race B votes 58-42 for the candidate of the same race (and only 2 guys admitted it had something to do with race)
Who are the racist voters ?
But let's not forget Obama's church... "Only white people can be racist". So it's Race B that's almost 100% racists, capiche ?
The process DOESN'T know that. It simply knows that *IF* the kernel does that, the signature will change, an effect that can be used to make encryption keys inaccessible.
If the data is never (in any significant piece) unencrypted in memory this will prevent ripping of movies for example.
The moment you dump the memory of the decoding process, the key it uses for decryption changes, and it loses the ability to decode the next frame. You can get full access to whatever is in it's memory, but by doing that you change a decryption key.
If the program never decodes any significant part of the video stream simultaneously it makes digitally copying said film VERY VERY hard (with minor qualifications it only leaves the analog hole open).
The remote server might require, and check, a signed checksum value for the running process, effectively preventing you from communicating with said server with any other program than those with known an approved checksums.
It doesn't prevent you from doing anything at all. It only prevents you from lying about what you're doing to those who bother to check.
But it does not prevent you from doing anything with your computer. In fact it enables you to do much more with it, in a secure manner. No virus will be able to claim to be a "system upgrade" from redhat/microsoft/whatever. You could trust programs running on computers you don't control with one not-so-trivial check on all incoming packets.
Say you have a big computational job. Say, calculating a formula to fit a a given number of measurements. You supply the program you wish to run (signed), the input data (signed), and you get something back.
How do you know they didn't simply construct bullshit data that's totally wrong but quickly created ? Well they sign the result dataset with the process-checksum generated key. You make 1 little calculation on the result dataset and you're sure it's the real thing.
Say you have a car racing game. "IHaveABigDick" ais the name at the top of your online highscore list, with a score of 99 999 999 999 999 999 999 (happens all the time). Well, with TPM you can prevent that. You can trust that certain packets come from a specific binary on a remote computer.
You have a webbank application, acquired from the bank. The bank supplied a little device for you to type your password on, to authenticate to a certain application. A hacker installs another (much more fun) binary on your computer. You, unsuspecting, start up the binary, enter your password on the device and it tells you you've been hacked since the program signature has changed... you can't login, nor can the password be transmitted to the hacker in a useful form.
Everyone has full control over their computer, they can still see everything that happens on their computer. They just can't lie to you about it anymore if you check the checksums on the packets.
Needless to say the 8:55 statement is not allegorical (check for yourself and compare, for example, with the later chapters). So the verse is "of fundamental meaning" "clear" and "decisive". In any interpretation it is forbidden to go seek "hidden meanings", nor is any indirection allowed.
Here is one of the official "guides" for interpreting said statement. It, again, does not lack in clarity :
"Allah states here that the worst moving creatures on the face of the earth are those who disbelieve, who do not embrace the faith, and break promises whenever they make a covenant, even when they vow to keep them,"...
(this is later further elaborated to mean that peace treaties between muslims and non-muslims have exactly 1 purpose : deception of the non-muslims, allowing the muslims to become militarily stronger, with the further stipulation that regardless of any treaty, every 10 years there must be at least 1 attack, no matter what it may cost the muslims. There can never be peace. Only temporary (max 10 years) cessation of hostilities)
("islam" means "opression" in the military sense, meaning it is enforced, not voluntary, so that it has stuff like this is hardly surprising, generally "submission" is taken as a translation, but it does not refer to the speaker (that would be istaslam if it is militarily enforced, or astaslam if it is done freely), but to a third party, nor does it mean peace (which is salaam). It means actively making others submit (by the practice of "hisbah" for example), not submitting yourself, like in Christianity)
Kansas or not, I'm pretty certain you didn't bother to read the article. From the material presented, this is a pretty obvious case of abuse of power. I'm posting from the States, but I'm certainly not ill-informed on these matters.
Unless the newspaper article was... you know... biased.
Never happens right ? With the cartoon crisis every newspaper (especially in Europe) utterly defended freedom of speech, right ?
Oh wait... wrong.
I'm not saying your misinformed. You just refuse to see bias where it obviously exists. They did not arrest these people for reading.
After all the quran itself preaches violence and hate (unless you call "all unbelievers are less than the filthyest of animals" just something you say every day, oh and the quran specifies it is to be interpreted literally, so don't start with "interpretation" bullshit, it means exactly what it says it means, and that's a fact, not an opinion). If you arrest people for reading stuff that demands violence, they could at least be consistent and just arrest every muslim.
Actually there is. The remote computer does not need *any* control over your local system.
The TPM basically generates a checksum of the running code, and cryptographically signs that checksum. That checksum will include any debuggers or whatever you have run in the same address space as the program though.
It (for example) allows programs to check who has access to the memory they're using before they choose to decrypt it (by using a key that's encrypted to that correctly signed checksum value for example), in a way that can't be subverted without compromising the TPM chip itself.
This does not give anyone any control over your machine. You can easily kill the process, or read out it's memory.
I own my computer. I bought the hardware. I should be able to do whatever I want with it. The reasons the concept of copyright has been created are not compelling enough to essentially force every computer to have a police chip in it to make sure we honor it.
The TPM does not prevent you from doing this. It only provides "secure, remote attestation". It allows you, for example, to prove to a copyright holder that you've deleted something and cannot retrieve it.
It allows you to prove to a remote server that you're running an unmodified version of a binary.
It also allows you to trust others. It makes no distinction between copyright holders and you. Everybody can use his TPM to do what he wants.
With a TPM you could build, for example, a secure, decentralized online money exchange program. And it would be a quite simple thing to do, too. People could still cheat, and modify the program, but they wouldn't be able to lie to you about having modified the program. Think about what this could mean for paypal for example : no more phishing, no more stupid website tricks, working paypal payments when not connected to the web or when the paypal servers are down,... But there's nothing preventing you from beating paypal to it.
Or you could use it to prove that "high score " was generated on your computer, by a binary with signature .
In other words, a TPM in your computer allows you to do everything you do today, and more. It also allows copyright holders to do more, obviously. But there's nothing preventing you from using the TPM's features, and it certainly does not give copyright holders root on your computer, nor does it make your computer "betray" you.
-TPM in and of itself won't protect against piracy at all if the implementation is botched.
True, but they're "tamper proof". It will take a hell of a lot more hardware to crack them. Start with an electron microscope, and you're not done with just that one little part...
Furthermore, due to the mandatory CRL's, there will not be any widely published hacks.
-Tying purchased software or media to a specific hardware device p*sses people off when they repair, replace or upgrade and their DRMed stuff no longer works.
The TPM allows just not doing that (of course whether people use it like that is another question) : you can prove, to another TPM or to the publisher, that you deleted something beyond retrieval.
Therefore the TPM could easily be made to allow the "first sale doctrine" to go digital in a non-stupid way.
-Talk about opening up Asian markets, etc, is proceeding under the flawed assumption that those who acquire illegal copies of a game would even purchase a legit copy.
Then they can do without. Just wondering : do you feel bad that thieves are denied the use of your car ? No ?
You're laboring under the assumption that those thieves would even buy a car if they were prevented from stealing yours !
So you'll leave them in the ignition from now on ? No ? Isn't it hypocritical to force others to let their stuff be stolen and not do the same yourself ?
-Restricting your potential install base in this manner will reduce exposure, popularity, and ultimately sales of your game despite the opposite being your goal.
Actually the goal is to maximize PAYING CUSTOMERS. Not "exposure". Exposure doesn't pay. Exposure is what Al Gore is after. What Obama is after (in the case of a Chicago politician, perhaps exposure does indeed pay, just look at the govt. job his wife has "somehow" gotten). What Bush is after. For all us non-politicians, we're in it for the money (well, for a living at least).
Cool, and since your car is the fruit of your labor (as opposed to the fruit of the labor of, for example shareware programmers, who have been utterly devastated by piracy), you'll totally understand if I steal it, right ?
(stealing meaning taking it without giving what you ask in return for it)
There *can* be a lot of people working on games, people working on the hardware, people... but only if piracy is "sufficiently" prevented. Otherwise, it'll all just die.
There will only be things worth pirating as long as people most people don't pirate stuff. Obviously.
Can you please stop equating every ideology with every other. After all if you say that then you are evil too, since whatever ideology you have, it is evil by this standard.
Sure, anyone can LIE about his intentions and use any religion to achieve personal ends. Sure. But there is also the truth. There are facts one can look up.
Obviously nobody vouches for the behavior of EVERY last man (or woman) who claims to follow some ideology. However for most ideologies one can easily assemble facts. A trivial example might be that any true socialist is to take the bus, and not to have his own car. If not, one is obviously not a principled socialist. That just about every socialist politician have multiple personal cars does not mean socialism allows for everyone to have a personal car, it is vehemenently opposed to it. Likewise, Al Gore isn't in favor of lowering HIS OWN co2 output, and thus isn't really concerned about the environment, at least not in principle. He's a career politician who will switch sides if he deems it wise. Does that mean that environmentalism doesn't have a message ? Does it mean that environmentalism wants to give everyone a personal private jet ? Obviously not. It exists, and it's message is quite clear, despite the fact that it's main proponent is such a big "environmental sinner". Real socialist exist (e.g. in Israel, the settler movement), and real enviromentalists exist.
The same can be said about a "true" Christian and a "true" muslim. They exist. Not merely someone who claims to be Christian or muslim, but one who truly is, and looks to the bible (or quran) for guidance. Those are books, who haven't been changed for X years (bible : 1900 years, quran : about 60 years now), and are considered constant. Their contents do not change, and cannot be turned into just anything. There may be some room for interpretation, but certainly not as much as you claim there is. The ten commandments are VERY clear, and their meaning, even if they are currently poorly translated, is a known constant for nearly 4000 years now.
Therefore "Christianity" (meaning Christians who follow the bible) will not use violence to achieve world domination in a honest interpretation (and by definition, people like that are honest). Islam will. Jesus did not attempt to conquer, nor did he kill people who doubted him. Muhammad DID, and those acts are accepted as sacred acts in the islamic faith.
Killing people for criticizing islam is the normal case in islam, not the exception. Google for "Asma bint marwan", and you will read that the islamic prophet sent out assasins in the night. Therefore, that is not an unacceptable act in islam, just like anything Jesus did is per definition not unacceptable (including insulting a woman (and her husband btw) for getting divorced, however everyone knows the story about the stoning, and utterly shaming a woman in public for "sleeping around", is perfectly acceptable Christian behavior, and this will never change, violence against a woman for that is unacceptable, and that too, will never change).
Well here is the islamic version of the stoning story:
If you criticize this action, muslims are to try to kill you (which is specified in another hadith, see again the Asma Bint Marwan story). Needless to say, this law is still applied in many muslim countries, including Iran and a few others.
Note also that Christians (and... "mostly" Jews, which today means nearly all of them) try to respect what they call God's law THEMSELVES.
Actually the post was mostly about the Canadian government.
And all governments claim the right to do whatever they want (with approval of parliament in case of America, in other words : the people that represent you) within their territory.
That's obviously what makes it necessary for other governments to keep their data away from eachother. That's not strange, that's just a fact.
Geographical conflicts exist in the real world, as everybody knows. Here's a newsflash : so do you. Nature, it seems, has not seen fit to provide an "opt-out" policy.
By the early 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate had rapidly captured North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Spain from a predominantly Christian Byzantine Empire. During the 12th century, the Reconquista picked up an ideological potency that is considered to be the first example of a concerted "Christian" effort to recapture territory lost to Muslims, as part of the expansion efforts of the Christian kingdoms along the Bay of Biscay. Spanish kingdoms, knightly orders and mercenaries began...
The crusades, certainly the first three, were defensive in nature on the Christian side. The muslims were (as has been nearly always been true in their history) the agressors.
It gets worse. After a while a sort of peace was reached, a sort of balance, with some 5 christian kingdoms in Israel. They were the source of food for the muslims.
The muslims KNEW that attacking their only source of food would both cause a famine, and preclude any chance they might have had to defend themselves from the mongols. They attacked, 30 million muslims starved, and the mongols (also muslims) committed started the massacre that would later turn into the massacre of the Indians.
They also started the black slave trade, a practice that would continue to be organised by the muslims until 1923, when British forces defeated the last caliph (the muslim pope).
A Turkish homosexual (who is a hero in my book) proceeded to create the modern state of Turkey. You've probably heard of him : Atatuk. Just in case any Turks read this : I mean no disrespect (rather the reverse : it is truly amazing what he accomplished, given his situation) to Ataturk by this.
His unofficial "successor", Ay amin al Husseini is called "hitler's mufti" for a reason :
He was personally responsible to give the order to one of the two muslim regiments of the SS to execute 5000 children younger than 3 year, explicitly going against hitler's orders and risking his skin, because they were jews.
There are a few VERY low points in muslim history. And if you look up what sort of atrocities their prophet comitted, you become truly disgusted. But don't just accept what I say about that, rather, read it for yourself :
In other words : muslim wars can never cease until there are only muslims left. This position is shared by all islamic schools, EVEN the sufi one.
I'm not saying every muslim wants to do this. However, it is what their religion says. If they follow it, this is what they'll do. Most muslims do indeed not follow it.
... "over a period of 400 years". So were talking not about a worldwide population of 250 to 350 million, the killings occured over several generations.
They occured over a period of 400 years when life expectancy was (let's be generous) 40 years. So we're talking 10 times that amount of people, so between 2,5 and 3,5 billion people was alive.
If it all occured in a 100th of a nanosecond, you'd be right. However, wars used to last tens, if not hundreds of years. The muslims kept killing for over 400 years, thus giving plenty of time for new victims to be born. They also didn't stop because "the war ended" just the intensity of the killings went down. In reality in Kashmir (both in Pakistan's and Indian Kashmir) they're still at it.
Also it wasn't nearly as trivial as it is today to locate your opponent. This sounds like a stupid problem but let's take reality as is. TODAY, we're talking about 1200 years after the start of the muslim extermination campaign into india, there are STILL several buddhist and hindu villages on the edges of India in those days : on the border between pakistan and Iran. Even inside Saudi Arabia there are still (a few) non-muslim berber communities (don't tell them). Why ? Because by sheer luck they never encountered the muslim extermination armies.
Today they have a simple policy : they kill anyone that approaches their village immediately, and without exception (just like the Druze, another tiny people that resisted the muslim onslaught for a thousand+ years, do in Syria, in fact they're having a hard time kicking that particular habit in Lebanon as well). That's probably why they're still alive.
Wars, a 1000 years ago were -> utterly slow... the fastest army could move... oh say 40-50 km a day. WITHOUT fighting obviously. With fighting the average was maybe 2-3 km/day. So covering even a trivial area took ages. -> stupid... the only way to know where your enemy was located was either a map (if he didn't move) or asking. Asking people who lived 50-100 km away from what direction the enemy "mostly" came. So you can imagine just how accurate the movements were. Lets take the start of the first crusade as an example. A call for reinforcements was made in a Christian Jerusalem. 2 months later the western world received said plea. 12 years later reinforcements arrived. 12 years. During which the muslims "stood knee-deep in blood in the streets of Jerusalem". Can you imagine that this was even possible ? -> generally massive numbers of people never even knew there was a fight. At poitiers, you could live 10 km from the battlefield, and you'd hardly know anything was happening. At 50 km from the fighting it became probable that you never even knew. -> it wasn't possible, at all, to protect a border. Even today protecting even tiny borders is basically impossible. You just don't have the manpower. The wall of China was the largest ever border protecting structure, with massive numbers of soldiers assigned to it, construction costs of 5-10 times the GDP of China of those days and... it failed it's second attack. -> An extermination campagin was VERY successful if you had 2% of the people dead or enslaved. Successes like that are basically unheard of, due to the logistical limitations. -> they involved very few people. The general population rarely had any idea a war was on in the first place, never mind that they knew how it was going. -> what we call "native" inhabitants were constantly involved in exactly what darwin predicted. Resource wars. Constant resource wars for thousands of years. Wars that were not about domination, treasure or anything, but wars that were about survival and were fought to, or near to extermination. E.g. indians did this. Wars, fought to extermination over hunting grounds.
Meaning it's about whatever the government thinks is important.
If you did the same via megaphone during a service at a Mosque, you'd be in trouble.
Then why are these cartoons causing so much uproar ? Nobody broadcasted them into a mosque.
So just don't claim that there's a fair standard here. You'll just make a fool of yourself. "Piss christ" isn't offensive. A guy with a knife and a turban is. Something is going VERY wrong.
Wow if that's the standard by which you judge religions, and presumably the actions that must be taken to stop them, you must be advocating for nuking mecca.
Because by the standard of amounts of violence and death used to keep the cult/religion together, islam certainly spans the crown by a margin of at least a few hundred million deaths :
About 100 million people died, and that's counting only 1/3rd of the eastward expansion of islam, in about 400 years, and that's the low death toll estimate.
The inquisition is less than a grain of sand with it's estimated death toll of about 2000 (lowest) to about 50000 (highest).
So in comparison : the largest ever problematic section of Christian history caused 1/2000 th the amount of deaths as ONE muslim religious expansion war. And that's using the highest death toll estimate on the christian side and a low one of the muslim side (otherwise it'd be 2000 versus 300 million).
At the westward side of expansion there were a lot of cultures in the way of the muslims. Hardly a trace remains : Egyptians, Tunisians, Carthage, the Berbers, tons of Jewish kingdoms, twice as many small Christian kingdoms (and we're hardly 1/6th of the distance westward, one can only imagine the amount of culture lost)
It is the current behavior of the group that defines this, not what's in their books.
Which group ? The whole ? Certainly islam as practiced in Indonesia and Pakistan is practiced as a cult. You know with the violence against those outside, the murder of those who leave the cult, intolerance of criticism, absolute obedience to a leader (both countries have a religious hierarchy with a single individual...) etc. That's somewhere between 70 and 85% of all muslims worldwide, depending on whose figures you believe. So the large majority of muslims worldwide are part of a cult (let's say for the sake of the argument that most are victims of that cult, and unable to leave, but still members)
So where do you delineate the group ? Does the whole religion get stamped with the "cult" epithet ? Is an american muslim thus a cultist ? Certainly more than a few are, but that aside, are they all ?
Say I call islam a death cult, is that offensive ? To whom ? Who gets to decide ? Obviously no muslim is a "neutral bystander". Nor am I.
Guess it's the same as always : the politicians in charge...
The essence of the law is that it's (supposed to be) predictable. Ie you know in advance whether a certain action might land you in jail or not. This does not satisfy that requirement.
Allow me to show you just exactly how utterly devoid of meaning your post is :
Wow, what a tottering tower of misinterpretation, unfounded assumptions and bogus straw men. I don't even know where to start wading through this pile of horse shit, so I'm not even going to try. You've been reading too much Phillip Dick, haven't you?
All I'll say is, you have a pretty fucked up definition of fair.
You see, your idiotic reply is just as applicable to your own post as to mine. It doesn't have ANY content. In fact it's so utterly devoid of meaning it could be an Obama speech.
You didn't answer the central point I made. Should religions be treated equal, and any book that preaches hate, like the quran, be outlawed, and said law enforced ?
Furthermore, if you insert human rights into law, then you are effectively outlawing acting out one's islamic faith :
Emphasis on no equality between faiths, death penalty for leaving islam, no equality between the sexes (such as no judicial access for women).
So, answer this question : do you require muslims to follow human rights, and thereby outlaw at least part of their religion, thereby acknowledging the necessity of physical violence to be used against any muslim that prefers his faith to human rights ? Thereby maybe not outlawing the book "quran" itself, but outlawing following said book ?
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For example the press' constant insistence on discrediting her.
As for what she did indeed change (and I don't like some of these changes) : just look at her track record in her current role.
Obama's track record is one of extreme comformity and giving up at the first sign of trouble. It looks like one of his speeches : utterly prepared to create a certain aura around him. Not truthful, not smart, not even a misguided attempt at doing something, not something to actually make one iota of difference in the real world.
And, as I said before, he's a megalomaniac. He had to be *physically* restrained when he was criticized, forcibly held down by his campaign helpers. Can you imagine the shame that would bring if it were to happen in a real negotiation ? I can see the headlines now ("president of america restrained in loony bin for 5 hours by own bodyguards, Ahmadinejad went for a walk, conference had to be delayed for 8 hours to wait for the religious dictator to stop laughing").
And no, I wouldn't make any more cars with the dream of selling a hundred of them. I'd make a single car, show it off, and publish the blueprints in exchange for money. Then I'd start researching improvements and doing likewise with them. Alternatively, I could do commission work for modifications.
...
... etc")
Blueprints in exchange for money ? Heyhey now, they can be duplicated FOR FREE. I thought you were PRO-piracy, not against it
Information wants to be free, man ! So just give me those blueprints for free (and obviously you will provide the necessary support for free as well, since it's *YOUR* fault that I don't know what half the lines on your blueprint mean, and it's *YOUR* fault that if I make the drivetrain out of gingerbread that it doesn't work. Gingerbread was my genius stroke man ! Make it work) (the point I'm trying to make is that customers are like managers : I've swatted flies that were smarter than they are. Oh and people who pirate stuff do so out of an entitlement mentality (they "have a right to your stuff, your time,
Information wants to be free, man ! Don't hoard it all for yourself !
I like Hillary's tenacity. Not giving up is a quality, certainly in her case. And she's a woman, this is how she reacts under the rather extreme stress that the press is heaping on her.
I mean this woman can CHANGE things. I doubt she wants to (as opposed to Obama : I'm 100% sure he does not want to change things, in fact he'll fight to prevent it).
But if SHE wants to, stuff will happen. Even if she has to do it herself. She has not lost.
Allow me to quote Obama on a non-scripted instance (ie. what he really thinks as opposed to what he thinks you want to hear). This is the guy who is to run the American government ?
1.) Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech on Tuesday May 8th 2007, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died. The death toll was 11. Here's what he said exactly:
"In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died â" an entire town destroyed," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser.
â Marking the anniversary of the March 1965 "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Ala., Obama, speaking at a church, said his parents got together "because of what happened in Selma." Obama was born in 1961.
â Obama told Larry King on CNN -- asked about that anti-Hillary Rodham Clinton YouTube ad, a doctored version of a spot created for Apple computers -- "We don't have the technical capacity to create something like that."
â Obama, asked if homosexuality was immoral, in the wake of comments by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace, sidestepped the question. After pressure from gay groups, Obama issued a statement stating he did not agree with Pace "that homosexuality is immoral."
Cynicism is like terrorism?
â One of Obama's stump lines is that the biggest obstacle he fights is not any of his rivals, it is cynicism. He used a variation of it during a reception he hosted at a conference here sponsored by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Displaying a tin ear, Obama said that one of the enemies is not "just terrorists" or "just Hezbollah" or "just Hamas" -- "it's also cynicism."
â The Tribune dug this up: Obama, in his memoir, Dreams of My Father, writes of a story in Life magazine that influenced him -- about a black man trying to bleach his skin white. No such article could be found in Life or Ebony.
Insider or outsider?
â Another Obama stump line -- he said it again Tuesday morning to the Communications Workers of America here -- is that "I've been long enough in Washington to know that Washington needs to change." He is running against Washington yet his campaign is populated with political professionals who are Washington insiders.
â Obama's embrace of some rhetoric used by rival John Edwards is getting attention. Edwards, in a 2003 speech made for his first presidential run said, "I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change Washington."
Obama is a demagogue. He says what he thinks you want to hear. He listened to "white people are the devil" for 17 YEARS, every sunday (or so he claims).
THAT's what he thinks. Yes he can write speeches, that will change once (if) he gets elected. Then again, it will probably change sooner than that.
So you're basically saying that of the 90% blacks who vote for Obama, 40% are idiots, or at least the 25% who admitted to voting for Obama based on race ?
If you vote for Obama as a black (or a white) based ENTIRELY on race then you're a racist, sure as hell.
Obviously. Are we seriously considering changing these definition because they don't fit the "politics du jour". If 25% of blacks readily admit to being racists, that doesn't change the definition of racist. At all. And let's get one thing straight : if Obama were white, he wouldn't be in the running. That, by itself, is racist.
Yes it's fashionable to vote Obama. However he's stupid : he does NOT know how many united states there are (57 last time he was asked) then again he wants to attack Pakistan, perhaps he intends to make it a state ?
His ideas about "raising taxes because it's more fair" are beyond stupid even if you're a lefty (after all doing it like that will destroy government, not grow it).
And sorry to say this, but the guy is a serious megalomaniac. He's lost it twice, and that was among people who adored him. He had to be physically restrained on one occasion. Will he even be able to not physically hit Ahmadinejad, never mind convince him to calm it on the nuke program ? Every rational human knows that it can't be done.
Just now he claimed his uncle was a soviet, for some cheap war credit :
"...Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz..."
(it was Russia, Stalin to be exact, who liberated Aushwitz, did he mean to say his uncle killed people for Stalin ?)
He intends to select supreme court judges on one criterium : that they do NOT follow the law.
I mean how stupid can you get ? Bush has a few low points, and isn't much of a public speaker, but this guy is in danger of getting carted off to the isolation ward of a psychic clinic before the campaign ends.
America, constantly sending off Condoleeza Rice, and before that Colin Powell, to represent it oversees, does not need to prove to non-idiots that blacks can make it in America if they work for it. And there are more "non-whites" in the highest level of government, Gonzales, Chao. The American government is neither monolithic in faith, nor in color or ethnicity, so let's stop claiming it's racist. People will stop respecting you.
No American alive today ever had even a single black slave (except perhaps one who is primarily a middle-eastern muslim). Americans are NOT responsible for something that happened before their great-grandfathers were born, in fact it's Americans that are responsible for ending the (muslim) black slave trade at the beginning of the 20th century. Nobody blames Angela Merkel for the holocaust, and her father DID actually "participate". It's stupid.
I work for a company that has ONE white guy in the entire senior management structure. One. (I don't like him, but that's another issue, not that I truly think the other direction members are there to help me, but this guy's an idiot. Not the biggest idiot of the bunch, but he's my closest chef).
What are you, racist ? Not voting for a black man is obviously racist. Clinton is a woman, so they're giving her some leeway in politically-correct land.
... "Only white people can be racist". So it's Race B that's almost 100% racists, capiche ?
...
But let's take a look at races, without prejudice :
-> Race A votes 91-9 for the candidate of the same race (and 25% admit that they only did soe because of race)
-> Race B votes 58-42 for the candidate of the same race (and only 2 guys admitted it had something to do with race)
Who are the racist voters ?
But let's not forget Obama's church
As Obama's mentor says Are you white ? Are you aware that you've created the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied
The process DOESN'T know that. It simply knows that *IF* the kernel does that, the signature will change, an effect that can be used to make encryption keys inaccessible.
... you can't login, nor can the password be transmitted to the hacker in a useful form.
If the data is never (in any significant piece) unencrypted in memory this will prevent ripping of movies for example.
The moment you dump the memory of the decoding process, the key it uses for decryption changes, and it loses the ability to decode the next frame. You can get full access to whatever is in it's memory, but by doing that you change a decryption key.
If the program never decodes any significant part of the video stream simultaneously it makes digitally copying said film VERY VERY hard (with minor qualifications it only leaves the analog hole open).
The remote server might require, and check, a signed checksum value for the running process, effectively preventing you from communicating with said server with any other program than those with known an approved checksums.
It doesn't prevent you from doing anything at all. It only prevents you from lying about what you're doing to those who bother to check.
But it does not prevent you from doing anything with your computer. In fact it enables you to do much more with it, in a secure manner. No virus will be able to claim to be a "system upgrade" from redhat/microsoft/whatever. You could trust programs running on computers you don't control with one not-so-trivial check on all incoming packets.
Say you have a big computational job. Say, calculating a formula to fit a a given number of measurements. You supply the program you wish to run (signed), the input data (signed), and you get something back.
How do you know they didn't simply construct bullshit data that's totally wrong but quickly created ? Well they sign the result dataset with the process-checksum generated key. You make 1 little calculation on the result dataset and you're sure it's the real thing.
Say you have a car racing game. "IHaveABigDick" ais the name at the top of your online highscore list, with a score of 99 999 999 999 999 999 999 (happens all the time). Well, with TPM you can prevent that. You can trust that certain packets come from a specific binary on a remote computer.
You have a webbank application, acquired from the bank. The bank supplied a little device for you to type your password on, to authenticate to a certain application. A hacker installs another (much more fun) binary on your computer. You, unsuspecting, start up the binary, enter your password on the device and it tells you you've been hacked since the program signature has changed
Everyone has full control over their computer, they can still see everything that happens on their computer. They just can't lie to you about it anymore if you check the checksums on the packets.
Here it is in 3 common english translations :
...
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/008.qmt.html#008.055
Here are the (primary) rules specified for interpreting said statement. They are quite clear :
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/003.qmt.html#003.007
Needless to say the 8:55 statement is not allegorical (check for yourself and compare, for example, with the later chapters). So the verse is "of fundamental meaning" "clear" and "decisive". In any interpretation it is forbidden to go seek "hidden meanings", nor is any indirection allowed.
Here is one of the official "guides" for interpreting said statement. It, again, does not lack in clarity :
http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=8&tid=20426
"Allah states here that the worst moving creatures on the face of the earth are those who disbelieve, who do not embrace the faith, and break promises whenever they make a covenant, even when they vow to keep them,"
(this is later further elaborated to mean that peace treaties between muslims and non-muslims have exactly 1 purpose : deception of the non-muslims, allowing the muslims to become militarily stronger, with the further stipulation that regardless of any treaty, every 10 years there must be at least 1 attack, no matter what it may cost the muslims. There can never be peace. Only temporary (max 10 years) cessation of hostilities)
("islam" means "opression" in the military sense, meaning it is enforced, not voluntary, so that it has stuff like this is hardly surprising, generally "submission" is taken as a translation, but it does not refer to the speaker (that would be istaslam if it is militarily enforced, or astaslam if it is done freely), but to a third party, nor does it mean peace (which is salaam). It means actively making others submit (by the practice of "hisbah" for example), not submitting yourself, like in Christianity)
Kansas or not, I'm pretty certain you didn't bother to read the article. From the material presented, this is a pretty obvious case of abuse of power. I'm posting from the States, but I'm certainly not ill-informed on these matters.
... you know ... biased.
... wrong.
Unless the newspaper article was
Never happens right ? With the cartoon crisis every newspaper (especially in Europe) utterly defended freedom of speech, right ?
Oh wait
I'm not saying your misinformed. You just refuse to see bias where it obviously exists. They did not arrest these people for reading.
After all the quran itself preaches violence and hate (unless you call "all unbelievers are less than the filthyest of animals" just something you say every day, oh and the quran specifies it is to be interpreted literally, so don't start with "interpretation" bullshit, it means exactly what it says it means, and that's a fact, not an opinion). If you arrest people for reading stuff that demands violence, they could at least be consistent and just arrest every muslim.
Actually there is. The remote computer does not need *any* control over your local system.
The TPM basically generates a checksum of the running code, and cryptographically signs that checksum. That checksum will include any debuggers or whatever you have run in the same address space as the program though.
It (for example) allows programs to check who has access to the memory they're using before they choose to decrypt it (by using a key that's encrypted to that correctly signed checksum value for example), in a way that can't be subverted without compromising the TPM chip itself.
This does not give anyone any control over your machine. You can easily kill the process, or read out it's memory.
I own my computer. I bought the hardware. I should be able to do whatever I want with it. The reasons the concept of copyright has been created are not compelling enough to essentially force every computer to have a police chip in it to make sure we honor it.
... But there's nothing preventing you from beating paypal to it.
The TPM does not prevent you from doing this. It only provides "secure, remote attestation". It allows you, for example, to prove to a copyright holder that you've deleted something and cannot retrieve it.
It allows you to prove to a remote server that you're running an unmodified version of a binary.
It also allows you to trust others. It makes no distinction between copyright holders and you. Everybody can use his TPM to do what he wants.
With a TPM you could build, for example, a secure, decentralized online money exchange program. And it would be a quite simple thing to do, too. People could still cheat, and modify the program, but they wouldn't be able to lie to you about having modified the program. Think about what this could mean for paypal for example : no more phishing, no more stupid website tricks, working paypal payments when not connected to the web or when the paypal servers are down,
Or you could use it to prove that "high score " was generated on your computer, by a binary with signature .
In other words, a TPM in your computer allows you to do everything you do today, and more. It also allows copyright holders to do more, obviously. But there's nothing preventing you from using the TPM's features, and it certainly does not give copyright holders root on your computer, nor does it make your computer "betray" you.
You really ought to look up what the TPM is and what it does, because it'll be a hell of a lot harder than modifying executables.
The TPM can be made to decrypt those executables on the fly, which renders them effectively unmodifyable.
-TPM in and of itself won't protect against piracy at all if the implementation is botched.
...
True, but they're "tamper proof". It will take a hell of a lot more hardware to crack them. Start with an electron microscope, and you're not done with just that one little part
Furthermore, due to the mandatory CRL's, there will not be any widely published hacks.
-Tying purchased software or media to a specific hardware device p*sses people off when they repair, replace or upgrade and their DRMed stuff no longer works.
The TPM allows just not doing that (of course whether people use it like that is another question) : you can prove, to another TPM or to the publisher, that you deleted something beyond retrieval.
Therefore the TPM could easily be made to allow the "first sale doctrine" to go digital in a non-stupid way.
-Talk about opening up Asian markets, etc, is proceeding under the flawed assumption that those who acquire illegal copies of a game would even purchase a legit copy.
Then they can do without. Just wondering : do you feel bad that thieves are denied the use of your car ? No ?
You're laboring under the assumption that those thieves would even buy a car if they were prevented from stealing yours !
So you'll leave them in the ignition from now on ? No ? Isn't it hypocritical to force others to let their stuff be stolen and not do the same yourself ?
-Restricting your potential install base in this manner will reduce exposure, popularity, and ultimately sales of your game despite the opposite being your goal.
Actually the goal is to maximize PAYING CUSTOMERS. Not "exposure". Exposure doesn't pay. Exposure is what Al Gore is after. What Obama is after (in the case of a Chicago politician, perhaps exposure does indeed pay, just look at the govt. job his wife has "somehow" gotten). What Bush is after. For all us non-politicians, we're in it for the money (well, for a living at least).
Cool, and since your car is the fruit of your labor (as opposed to the fruit of the labor of, for example shareware programmers, who have been utterly devastated by piracy), you'll totally understand if I steal it, right ?
... but only if piracy is "sufficiently" prevented. Otherwise, it'll all just die.
(stealing meaning taking it without giving what you ask in return for it)
There *can* be a lot of people working on games, people working on the hardware, people
There will only be things worth pirating as long as people most people don't pirate stuff. Obviously.
Can you please stop equating every ideology with every other. After all if you say that then you are evil too, since whatever ideology you have, it is evil by this standard.
:
... "mostly" Jews, which today means nearly all of them) try to respect what they call God's law THEMSELVES.
Sure, anyone can LIE about his intentions and use any religion to achieve personal ends. Sure. But there is also the truth. There are facts one can look up.
Obviously nobody vouches for the behavior of EVERY last man (or woman) who claims to follow some ideology. However for most ideologies one can easily assemble facts. A trivial example might be that any true socialist is to take the bus, and not to have his own car. If not, one is obviously not a principled socialist. That just about every socialist politician have multiple personal cars does not mean socialism allows for everyone to have a personal car, it is vehemenently opposed to it. Likewise, Al Gore isn't in favor of lowering HIS OWN co2 output, and thus isn't really concerned about the environment, at least not in principle. He's a career politician who will switch sides if he deems it wise. Does that mean that environmentalism doesn't have a message ? Does it mean that environmentalism wants to give everyone a personal private jet ? Obviously not. It exists, and it's message is quite clear, despite the fact that it's main proponent is such a big "environmental sinner". Real socialist exist (e.g. in Israel, the settler movement), and real enviromentalists exist.
The same can be said about a "true" Christian and a "true" muslim. They exist. Not merely someone who claims to be Christian or muslim, but one who truly is, and looks to the bible (or quran) for guidance. Those are books, who haven't been changed for X years (bible : 1900 years, quran : about 60 years now), and are considered constant. Their contents do not change, and cannot be turned into just anything. There may be some room for interpretation, but certainly not as much as you claim there is. The ten commandments are VERY clear, and their meaning, even if they are currently poorly translated, is a known constant for nearly 4000 years now.
Therefore "Christianity" (meaning Christians who follow the bible) will not use violence to achieve world domination in a honest interpretation (and by definition, people like that are honest). Islam will. Jesus did not attempt to conquer, nor did he kill people who doubted him. Muhammad DID, and those acts are accepted as sacred acts in the islamic faith.
Killing people for criticizing islam is the normal case in islam, not the exception. Google for "Asma bint marwan", and you will read that the islamic prophet sent out assasins in the night. Therefore, that is not an unacceptable act in islam, just like anything Jesus did is per definition not unacceptable (including insulting a woman (and her husband btw) for getting divorced, however everyone knows the story about the stoning, and utterly shaming a woman in public for "sleeping around", is perfectly acceptable Christian behavior, and this will never change, violence against a woman for that is unacceptable, and that too, will never change).
Well here is the islamic version of the stoning story
(same story as in the bible until the judgement is made, and continues) Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) pronounced judgment about both of them and they were stoned. Abdullah b. 'Umar said: I was one of those who stoned them, and I saw him (the Jew) protecting her (the Jewess) with his body.
If you criticize this action, muslims are to try to kill you (which is specified in another hadith, see again the Asma Bint Marwan story). Needless to say, this law is still applied in many muslim countries, including Iran and a few others.
Note also that Christians (and
Actually the post was mostly about the Canadian government.
And all governments claim the right to do whatever they want (with approval of parliament in case of America, in other words : the people that represent you) within their territory.
That's obviously what makes it necessary for other governments to keep their data away from eachother. That's not strange, that's just a fact.
Geographical conflicts exist in the real world, as everybody knows. Here's a newsflash : so do you. Nature, it seems, has not seen fit to provide an "opt-out" policy.
Despite my previous post actually containing the truth you repeat this lie ... why ?
...
The first Crusade on wikipedia
Here is the reason for the first crusade :
By the early 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate had rapidly captured North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Spain from a predominantly Christian Byzantine Empire. During the 12th century, the Reconquista picked up an ideological potency that is considered to be the first example of a concerted "Christian" effort to recapture territory lost to Muslims, as part of the expansion efforts of the Christian kingdoms along the Bay of Biscay. Spanish kingdoms, knightly orders and mercenaries began
The crusades, certainly the first three, were defensive in nature on the Christian side. The muslims were (as has been nearly always been true in their history) the agressors.
It gets worse. After a while a sort of peace was reached, a sort of balance, with some 5 christian kingdoms in Israel. They were the source of food for the muslims.
The muslims KNEW that attacking their only source of food would both cause a famine, and preclude any chance they might have had to defend themselves from the mongols. They attacked, 30 million muslims starved, and the mongols (also muslims) committed started the massacre that would later turn into the massacre of the Indians.
They also started the black slave trade, a practice that would continue to be organised by the muslims until 1923, when British forces defeated the last caliph (the muslim pope).
A Turkish homosexual (who is a hero in my book) proceeded to create the modern state of Turkey. You've probably heard of him : Atatuk. Just in case any Turks read this : I mean no disrespect (rather the reverse : it is truly amazing what he accomplished, given his situation) to Ataturk by this.
His unofficial "successor", Ay amin al Husseini is called "hitler's mufti" for a reason :
The last muslim "pope"
He was personally responsible to give the order to one of the two muslim regiments of the SS to execute 5000 children younger than 3 year, explicitly going against hitler's orders and risking his skin, because they were jews.
There are a few VERY low points in muslim history. And if you look up what sort of atrocities their prophet comitted, you become truly disgusted. But don't just accept what I say about that, rather, read it for yourself :
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/008.smt.html#008.3371
And what is the goal of the muslims ? Don't let me keep that from you.
And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do.
In other words : muslim wars can never cease until there are only muslims left. This position is shared by all islamic schools, EVEN the sufi one.
I'm not saying every muslim wants to do this. However, it is what their religion says. If they follow it, this is what they'll do. Most muslims do indeed not follow it.
... "over a period of 400 years". So were talking not about a worldwide population of 250 to 350 million, the killings occured over several generations.
... the fastest army could move ... oh say 40-50 km a day. WITHOUT fighting obviously. With fighting the average was maybe 2-3 km/day. So covering even a trivial area took ages. ... the only way to know where your enemy was located was either a map (if he didn't move) or asking. Asking people who lived 50-100 km away from what direction the enemy "mostly" came. So you can imagine just how accurate the movements were. Lets take the start of the first crusade as an example. A call for reinforcements was made in a Christian Jerusalem. 2 months later the western world received said plea. 12 years later reinforcements arrived. 12 years. During which the muslims "stood knee-deep in blood in the streets of Jerusalem". Can you imagine that this was even possible ? ... it failed it's second attack.
They occured over a period of 400 years when life expectancy was (let's be generous) 40 years. So we're talking 10 times that amount of people, so between 2,5 and 3,5 billion people was alive.
If it all occured in a 100th of a nanosecond, you'd be right. However, wars used to last tens, if not hundreds of years. The muslims kept killing for over 400 years, thus giving plenty of time for new victims to be born. They also didn't stop because "the war ended" just the intensity of the killings went down. In reality in Kashmir (both in Pakistan's and Indian Kashmir) they're still at it.
Also it wasn't nearly as trivial as it is today to locate your opponent. This sounds like a stupid problem but let's take reality as is. TODAY, we're talking about 1200 years after the start of the muslim extermination campaign into india, there are STILL several buddhist and hindu villages on the edges of India in those days : on the border between pakistan and Iran. Even inside Saudi Arabia there are still (a few) non-muslim berber communities (don't tell them). Why ? Because by sheer luck they never encountered the muslim extermination armies.
Today they have a simple policy : they kill anyone that approaches their village immediately, and without exception (just like the Druze, another tiny people that resisted the muslim onslaught for a thousand+ years, do in Syria, in fact they're having a hard time kicking that particular habit in Lebanon as well). That's probably why they're still alive.
Wars, a 1000 years ago were
-> utterly slow
-> stupid
-> generally massive numbers of people never even knew there was a fight. At poitiers, you could live 10 km from the battlefield, and you'd hardly know anything was happening. At 50 km from the fighting it became probable that you never even knew.
-> it wasn't possible, at all, to protect a border. Even today protecting even tiny borders is basically impossible. You just don't have the manpower. The wall of China was the largest ever border protecting structure, with massive numbers of soldiers assigned to it, construction costs of 5-10 times the GDP of China of those days and
-> An extermination campagin was VERY successful if you had 2% of the people dead or enslaved. Successes like that are basically unheard of, due to the logistical limitations.
-> they involved very few people. The general population rarely had any idea a war was on in the first place, never mind that they knew how it was going.
-> what we call "native" inhabitants were constantly involved in exactly what darwin predicted. Resource wars. Constant resource wars for thousands of years. Wars that were not about domination, treasure or anything, but wars that were about survival and were fought to, or near to extermination. E.g. indians did this. Wars, fought to extermination over hunting grounds.
It's about context.
Meaning it's about whatever the government thinks is important.
If you did the same via megaphone during a service at a Mosque, you'd be in trouble.
Then why are these cartoons causing so much uproar ? Nobody broadcasted them into a mosque.
So just don't claim that there's a fair standard here. You'll just make a fool of yourself. "Piss christ" isn't offensive. A guy with a knife and a turban is. Something is going VERY wrong.
Wow if that's the standard by which you judge religions, and presumably the actions that must be taken to stop them, you must be advocating for nuking mecca.
Because by the standard of amounts of violence and death used to keep the cult/religion together, islam certainly spans the crown by a margin of at least a few hundred million deaths :
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2342790/Hindu-Indian-History-Islamic-Invasion
About 100 million people died, and that's counting only 1/3rd of the eastward expansion of islam, in about 400 years, and that's the low death toll estimate.
The inquisition is less than a grain of sand with it's estimated death toll of about 2000 (lowest) to about 50000 (highest).
So in comparison : the largest ever problematic section of Christian history caused 1/2000 th the amount of deaths as ONE muslim religious expansion war. And that's using the highest death toll estimate on the christian side and a low one of the muslim side (otherwise it'd be 2000 versus 300 million).
At the westward side of expansion there were a lot of cultures in the way of the muslims. Hardly a trace remains : Egyptians, Tunisians, Carthage, the Berbers, tons of Jewish kingdoms, twice as many small Christian kingdoms (and we're hardly 1/6th of the distance westward, one can only imagine the amount of culture lost)
So tell me, what do you think ?
It is the current behavior of the group that defines this, not what's in their books.
...) etc. That's somewhere between 70 and 85% of all muslims worldwide, depending on whose figures you believe. So the large majority of muslims worldwide are part of a cult (let's say for the sake of the argument that most are victims of that cult, and unable to leave, but still members)
Which group ? The whole ? Certainly islam as practiced in Indonesia and Pakistan is practiced as a cult. You know with the violence against those outside, the murder of those who leave the cult, intolerance of criticism, absolute obedience to a leader (both countries have a religious hierarchy with a single individual
So where do you delineate the group ? Does the whole religion get stamped with the "cult" epithet ? Is an american muslim thus a cultist ? Certainly more than a few are, but that aside, are they all ?
Who exactly is a "neutral" bystander ?
...
Say I call islam a death cult, is that offensive ? To whom ? Who gets to decide ? Obviously no muslim is a "neutral bystander". Nor am I.
Guess it's the same as always : the politicians in charge
The essence of the law is that it's (supposed to be) predictable. Ie you know in advance whether a certain action might land you in jail or not. This does not satisfy that requirement.
Or they don't want the environuts to start showing up with pikes and torches ...
Seems a reasonable fear to me.
Allow me to show you just exactly how utterly devoid of meaning your post is :
Wow, what a tottering tower of misinterpretation, unfounded assumptions and bogus straw men. I don't even know where to start wading through this pile of horse shit, so I'm not even going to try. You've been reading too much Phillip Dick, haven't you?
All I'll say is, you have a pretty fucked up definition of fair.
You see, your idiotic reply is just as applicable to your own post as to mine. It doesn't have ANY content. In fact it's so utterly devoid of meaning it could be an Obama speech.
You didn't answer the central point I made. Should religions be treated equal, and any book that preaches hate, like the quran, be outlawed, and said law enforced ?
Furthermore, if you insert human rights into law, then you are effectively outlawing acting out one's islamic faith :
The one thing all muslim states agree upon : no human rights in islam
Emphasis on no equality between faiths, death penalty for leaving islam, no equality between the sexes (such as no judicial access for women).
So, answer this question : do you require muslims to follow human rights, and thereby outlaw at least part of their religion, thereby acknowledging the necessity of physical violence to be used against any muslim that prefers his faith to human rights ? Thereby maybe not outlawing the book "quran" itself, but outlawing following said book ?
Or do you wish to drop human rights ?
Let's hear it, I'm curious.