Well, all an atheist really says is "I don't believe in God".
As for agnosticsm - well, the problem is that there are many different definitions, and not all of them are mutually exclusive. A person who says your "agnostic" quote is in fact both agnostic and atheist. Indeed, the reason that I am an atheist is mainly due to the reasons you quote why you are an agnostic..
I'm aware of OS X's history, but whatever the history of it is (and I can't believe it is true that OS X is NeXTStep with just a different name - I thought Apple have added a lot to it in the meantime?) I think it's stretching the point to say that a NeXTStep machine was a Mac.
The original poster said "There are very few crashes for normal users of Macs", so I'll rephrase my response to saying that users of Macs only got memory protection when Apple ditched MacOS and replaced it with another OS that had it, an event that happened when memory protection was available on Windows and other OSs. Better?:)
I don't know if you've noticed, but OS X is kind of a break in code base from the classic MacOS that you've probably been bashing for 20 years now.
I'm well aware of that - you should tell that to all the people who have been bashing Windows for 20 years, claiming that MacOS was first with such and such a feature when actually they are talking about classic MacOS. And my point is not to bash other OSs, but to point out false claims that Mac users like to make about other OSs.
That just proves my point more, that other operating systems had memory protection before, since Mac OS X didn't even exist at that time. Memory protection isn't anything new, or unique to OS X, like the original poster suggested.
Actually, part of the "same as" issue is a result of Microsoft borrowing from Apple's user interface
There are plenty of other operating systems around; even if MacOS did have some drag and drop features before Windows, that doesn't mean they were first. And I don't see why it is bad to copy - MacOS "copied" plenty of features that were in Windows or other OSs for years (a command line, preemptive multitasking, memory protection).
Fair enough that you find MacOS easier to learn; not everyone feels the same, and my experience was that was the hardest OS I've found to learn. It's a subjective opinion, rather than based on actual things that Windows lacks.
I agree that the Registry is awful, though I've never had a problem with temp or ini files (well, ideally Windows would have a proper RAM disk like the Amiga for temp files, but that's another issue).
find using my Mac more pleasant. Part of it is cultural. Mac departments don't breed the kind of person who will name a printer "\\1161NYNEWSGENBC360S EDITORS" Instead, they'll do riffs on Greek, Roman or Nordic gods, planets, stars, and so on. I regularly access a disk drive called "India" and print to "Geminii" and "Phobos." Mac users understand when someone has their earphones on, gently humming away at a song playing on iTunes while working productively away. PC users find that odd. Your mileage may vary, of course.
It certainly does vary, my experience is that users of all platforms are just as likely to choose imaginative names and know what headphones mean. In fact, I find it quite bizarre to suggest that Mac users are more likely to do this (if anything, I'd say Unix/Linux users are more likely to do the naming thing).
No (though I have certainly used them). I'm not sure how this is relevant since the post was about what Windows supposedly can't do. The more relevant question is whether the original poster I replied to owns a Windows machine - it seems he prefers instead to just observe other Windows users.
The drag-and-drop in mac is far more refined than in windows, pritty much anything can be dragged to anything else (even down to listboxes & stuff like that).
*sigh* Drag and drop in listboxes "and stuff like that" works in Windows too. I mean, come on - I was dragging and dropping between listboxes on the Amiga ten years ago - this is hardly new stuff.
The other thing that windows people cannot grasp the concept of is a document based application. Almost everything in OSX is that, and Nothing in windows is (except VB6 in MDI mode).
Utterly false. In fact, not only are there many document based Windows applications are, I would say that most of them are. Which applications were you using - the only exception I can think of is Internet Explorer. Most of the applications I know and use (Opera, Word, Excel, Eudora, Borland C++, Visual Studio, Vim, Emacs, PaintShopPro, Acrobat, FrontPage) are all document based. You can close all the documents, and the application stays open.
Now, it may be that MacOS does this differently - I know that pre OS X, you could close all the windows and have no visible trace at all on screen of an application, and it would still be in memory. But it is a lie to say that Windows applications are not document based, it is just that they work differently, and I do not see that the Mac behaviour is better. If users are leaving applications running, it is because they do not realise they are running (since there is no visible clue), and I would say this is a bad point for the OS. I don't know if OS X still works this way, but if not you'll have to describe how its "document based" applications are different, and how that way is better.
For example: I want to burn a cd or DVD. I put the medum in, drag files to it, and eject. it asks me if I want to burn it, I click yes.
I've seen plenty of people in this thread claim this is possible with Windows XP.
Another example: I want to make a movie using some film on my camcorder. I plug the camcorder in, it says I have a camcorder, and it has video on it. do you want to import it. I click yes. It opens the iMovie application, imports the clips, sets the contrast levels, and makes the clips corectly. I drag & drop into the order I want, and add a whole mess of really cool effects, then do file -> export
Wow, just like the way I work on Windows!
That your PC didn't work with your SGI is unfortunate, but you clearly can't be suggesting that this is normal behaviour and that camcorders can't be used with Windows. If we're allowed to generalise from anacdotal evidence, then consider that everything works simply and elegantly for me in Windows, whilst I've had hassles and crashes with Macs. By your logic, that must be true for everyone.
Drag and Drop is far more refined in the Mac OS... you can take any document, and drag it to the a application's icon (anywhere you see the icon including the dock) and if the program can understand the document it will open it.
Same as in Windows.
Also doing thing like draging the icon of a jpeg (photo) and placing it in a document (like an email) will work as expected.
Same as in Windows.
PC users seem to want to perfrom convoluted operations to move thing around, from application to application and etc, but Drag and Drop usually works and is generally easy.
It sounds like your friends just don't like to use drag and drop. Drag and drop in Windows works just as well as you describe it working on the Mac.
When you want to use a feature you haven't tried before, look around. The people who design Mac applications are pretty good at trying to make things esay to figrue out.
You should take the same advice next time you use Windows.
The icons are actually on the right side of the desktop, where they won't be covered up by every window you open!
What does which side the icons are arranged on have to do with anything?
Windows don't automatically fill the entire screen unless you want them to!
Same with Windows.
Error messages, though not always very informative, do not come with a horrible blue screen and do not tell you cryptic things that don't make any sense at all.
Same with Windows.
There are very few crashes for normal users of Macs, and the ones that do occur generally affect only the program crashing rather than bringing down the whole machine.
Same with Windows. And the ability for a program to crash without taking down the OS generally comes from memory protection, something that other operating systems had before MacOS finally added it. I find it ironic therefore that you talk about it as if it is some Mac-only feature.
Another thing that will be difficult to get used to is the lack of viruses.
You can do this on Windows too - DLLs etc can happily live in the application's folder.
So how do shared libraries work on the Mac? Unless there's some clever way of dealing with them, there's no difference between Windows and Mac here, except possibly the non-technical difference that Windows applications are more likely to install DLLs in system directories (which is bad if they get left around, but good if they can be shared between applications).
Less icons. I think is due to the nature of executables but there are fewer icons. In Windows almost every file is an icon (unless hidden). In Mac, the only icons that you see with applications are the ones you need to click on to execute.
Out of curiosity, what if one does want to access or manipulate a particular file associated with an application? I'd rather have optionally hidden than always hidden..
As for hardware installation, Windows 9x was a pain, but under Windows 2000 things are straightforward IME.
People successfully write viruses for *Amigas* for goodness' sake, and where is their 95% market share?
Back when people were writing viruses for Amigas, the Amiga *was* the dominant platform in the home computer market (at least here in Europe), and that's what matters. This is not true for Macs.
I may be wrong, but I don't recall hearing of any new Amiga viruses in the last few years.
The fee for source is the reasonable fee for physical redistribution.
That only applies if you are providing source separately to a binary which has been released - in that case, you clearly aren't allowed to charge whatever you like.
But that's a different matter from charging for both the sources and binary together. My understand was that there was no limit on this (though of course, once one person has bought it, they are free to give it to whoever they want).
But I do want to try to show a little bit of why some Christians have a problem with D&D. Let's use another example. Maybe this is a little contrived, but say you were passionate about Native American rights. Maybe you are a Native American. And say there is this new RPG called Wild West which a good portion of the game involves killing Native Americans. While its only a game, it is a bit unsettling right?
I didn't think there was anything in D&D about killing Christians, so I don't think that's a fair analogy! And whilst these people seem to think that paganism and the occult are evil, in D&D you tend to play on the side of "Good", battling against "Evil". So I don't think that it is reasonably to have any issues with D&D because of this.
I can understand that Christians may dislike the fact that it portrays religions and Gods other than Christianity. But even though I may understand that this is the reason, that doesn't mean I think it is valid or reasonable; personally I think the world would be a much better place if people were tolerant of each others' religions, rather than branding them as evil.
I can understand that a Christian might choose not to play D&D because of this (although even then, I don't think it follows, as you say people can separate their true beliefs from playing something which is fantasy), but it's another thing entirely to force your religion upon others, and suggest that they are wrong to play.
Except unlike Windows, a six year old Mac doesn't even have memory protection, so the amount of security offered is limited. It's also susceptible to viruses, and you have to always run as "root". The only possible advantage it would have is security through obscurity, but then you've got all the disadvantages of using an obscure OS too, not to mention that that advantage is hardly exclusive to Macs.
The rest of your points are subjective opinions with no examples or evidence to back them up; on the other hand, I found MacOS to be the most painful OS I ever had to use - but I at least acknowledge this as opinion and not fact.
But quite why someone would bother with a six year old system if they were buying a new computer. And please don't tell me that your point was that a Mac of today is better than the Windows of six years old..
Windows 98 wasn't secure. "Press ESC instead of putting in your password". You do remember?
Did Microsoft ever claim that this was to secure the computer?
I thought it was pretty obvious that the password was to log onto a network. That's what I used it for, and pressing escape wouldn't let me still log onto the network. It would however let me use my computer without logging onto the network if I wished, which is an obvious feature to have.
Because the claim of theism is that there _is_ a true evil.
"Evil" doesn't just mean in the sense of absolute true evil - it can be used to refer to anything which you view as being particularly wrong.
The claim of atheism is that there's nothing but matter, and we just happen to be interesting clumps of matter.
Rubbish. Atheists don't believe in god, end of story. Even science acknowledges there is more than "clumps of matter" - eg, space, time, gravity, all of which seem to be very strange things that require a greater explanation than simply a space filled with "clumps of matter". It may be in time that we can start to understand what causes consciousness too.
I don't see how you go from believing that we are just interesting clumps of matter to believing that it actually matters which side of the fence you are on in dealing w/ these different clumps of matter.
Well, for example:
I believe these "clumps of matter" are sentient and are capable of feeling pain and suffering. I believe that these sets of actions cause pain and suffering to these clumps of matter, so I believe that these actions are wrong.
Ah right. Well the point probably comes down to the definition of spiritual. People can and do believe in sentience without believing it comes from anything supernatural or god-like. Other definitions of spiritual include things which aren't tangible or material - in which case, there is no reason why an atheist can't believe that some things (eg, love, sentience) are spriritual.
When I say "opinion", I don't mean "a matter of opinion in the same sense as your favourite colour", I mean in the sense that they have thought about the issue.
An atheist using the term "evil" because he feels certain that a particular deed is wrong is no different from a theist doing so. After all, there are many different religions with different opinions on what God supposedly says, so why do they use the term "evil", when they only have a different opinion?
I'm confused - atheism is to do with belief in God (ie, not having any), and nothing to do with belief in free will.
I don't know enough on pantheism to comment - if pantheists don't believe in god either, then I'd say that makes panstheism a subset of atheism. If pantheists do believe in god, then an atheism isn't going to be a pantheist.
I don't know what causes consciousness, but I believe whatever it is can be answered without saying "God did it", just as I believe is the case with every other thing in this Universe.
That's the problem. Some people's souls say nothing. Does that mean that nothing is right or wrong? The term "evil" signifies that it should be publicly obvious or at least discoverable when someone is doing an evil act. But if good/evil right/wrong are personal decisions, then really "fighting evil" makes no sense, it's actually just "fighting _them_" (whoever 'them' is - because for them, you are evil).
The sort of person who has no opinion on what is right or wrong is probably not the sort of person to use the word "evil", or if he did, he'd be wrong to do so.
But this is irrelevant unless you have evidence that RMS is one such person. People in general, atheists included, do have an opinion on right and wrong.
My reason for right/wrong is based on the effects on people. So for example, if I see someone causing harm to someone else, I may view that as wrong, and perhaps even view them as 'evil'.
Read this post again - you still seem to be under the mistaken impression that atheism is about believing that people are unthinking machines that do what they're programmed to do.
It's hard to call something "morality" that is just "psychological happenstance".
No harder than calling something "morality" that is just religion. If you're discussing what is right or wrong, then it's morality, whatever system you use to come to your conclusions.
If you believe that X is "psychological happenstance" it's hard to say that someone _else_ is evil just because they happened to have a different psychological happenstance than you do, since it's just environmental anyway.
Except it's not just environment - many atheists believe in free will.
Why should they care whether you trust them or not?
Exactly, they probably don't. So it's a good idea to hand over control of blocking sites to an organisation that, as you say, doesn't care about whether people trust them to being doing a good job or not?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, all an atheist really says is "I don't believe in God".
As for agnosticsm - well, the problem is that there are many different definitions, and not all of them are mutually exclusive. A person who says your "agnostic" quote is in fact both agnostic and atheist. Indeed, the reason that I am an atheist is mainly due to the reasons you quote why you are an agnostic..
I'm aware of OS X's history, but whatever the history of it is (and I can't believe it is true that OS X is NeXTStep with just a different name - I thought Apple have added a lot to it in the meantime?) I think it's stretching the point to say that a NeXTStep machine was a Mac.
:)
The original poster said "There are very few crashes for normal users of Macs", so I'll rephrase my response to saying that users of Macs only got memory protection when Apple ditched MacOS and replaced it with another OS that had it, an event that happened when memory protection was available on Windows and other OSs. Better?
I don't know if you've noticed, but OS X is kind of a break in code base from the classic MacOS that you've probably been bashing for 20 years now.
I'm well aware of that - you should tell that to all the people who have been bashing Windows for 20 years, claiming that MacOS was first with such and such a feature when actually they are talking about classic MacOS. And my point is not to bash other OSs, but to point out false claims that Mac users like to make about other OSs.
That just proves my point more, that other operating systems had memory protection before, since Mac OS X didn't even exist at that time. Memory protection isn't anything new, or unique to OS X, like the original poster suggested.
If a window opens in the top right of the screen, it's harder for it to cover icons on the left.
Actually, part of the "same as" issue is a result of Microsoft borrowing from Apple's user interface
There are plenty of other operating systems around; even if MacOS did have some drag and drop features before Windows, that doesn't mean they were first. And I don't see why it is bad to copy - MacOS "copied" plenty of features that were in Windows or other OSs for years (a command line, preemptive multitasking, memory protection).
Fair enough that you find MacOS easier to learn; not everyone feels the same, and my experience was that was the hardest OS I've found to learn. It's a subjective opinion, rather than based on actual things that Windows lacks.
I agree that the Registry is awful, though I've never had a problem with temp or ini files (well, ideally Windows would have a proper RAM disk like the Amiga for temp files, but that's another issue).
find using my Mac more pleasant. Part of it is cultural. Mac departments don't breed the kind of person who will name a printer "\\1161NYNEWSGENBC360S EDITORS" Instead, they'll do riffs on Greek, Roman or Nordic gods, planets, stars, and so on. I regularly access a disk drive called "India" and print to "Geminii" and "Phobos." Mac users understand when someone has their earphones on, gently humming away at a song playing on iTunes while working productively away. PC users find that odd. Your mileage may vary, of course.
It certainly does vary, my experience is that users of all platforms are just as likely to choose imaginative names and know what headphones mean. In fact, I find it quite bizarre to suggest that Mac users are more likely to do this (if anything, I'd say Unix/Linux users are more likely to do the naming thing).
mdwh2 I bet does not have a mac.....
No (though I have certainly used them). I'm not sure how this is relevant since the post was about what Windows supposedly can't do. The more relevant question is whether the original poster I replied to owns a Windows machine - it seems he prefers instead to just observe other Windows users.
The drag-and-drop in mac is far more refined than in windows, pritty much anything can be dragged to anything else (even down to listboxes & stuff like that).
*sigh* Drag and drop in listboxes "and stuff like that" works in Windows too. I mean, come on - I was dragging and dropping between listboxes on the Amiga ten years ago - this is hardly new stuff.
The other thing that windows people cannot grasp the concept of is a document based application. Almost everything in OSX is that, and Nothing in windows is (except VB6 in MDI mode).
Utterly false. In fact, not only are there many document based Windows applications are, I would say that most of them are. Which applications were you using - the only exception I can think of is Internet Explorer. Most of the applications I know and use (Opera, Word, Excel, Eudora, Borland C++, Visual Studio, Vim, Emacs, PaintShopPro, Acrobat, FrontPage) are all document based. You can close all the documents, and the application stays open.
Now, it may be that MacOS does this differently - I know that pre OS X, you could close all the windows and have no visible trace at all on screen of an application, and it would still be in memory. But it is a lie to say that Windows applications are not document based, it is just that they work differently, and I do not see that the Mac behaviour is better. If users are leaving applications running, it is because they do not realise they are running (since there is no visible clue), and I would say this is a bad point for the OS. I don't know if OS X still works this way, but if not you'll have to describe how its "document based" applications are different, and how that way is better.
For example: I want to burn a cd or DVD. I put the medum in, drag files to it, and eject. it asks me if I want to burn it, I click yes.
I've seen plenty of people in this thread claim this is possible with Windows XP.
Another example: I want to make a movie using some film on my camcorder. I plug the camcorder in, it says I have a camcorder, and it has video on it. do you want to import it. I click yes. It opens the iMovie application, imports the clips, sets the contrast levels, and makes the clips corectly. I drag & drop into the order I want, and add a whole mess of really cool effects, then do file -> export
Wow, just like the way I work on Windows!
That your PC didn't work with your SGI is unfortunate, but you clearly can't be suggesting that this is normal behaviour and that camcorders can't be used with Windows. If we're allowed to generalise from anacdotal evidence, then consider that everything works simply and elegantly for me in Windows, whilst I've had hassles and crashes with Macs. By your logic, that must be true for everyone.
Drag and Drop is far more refined in the Mac OS... you can take any document, and drag it to the a application's icon (anywhere you see the icon including the dock) and if the program can understand the document it will open it.
Same as in Windows.
Also doing thing like draging the icon of a jpeg (photo) and placing it in a document (like an email) will work as expected.
Same as in Windows.
PC users seem to want to perfrom convoluted operations to move thing around, from application to application and etc, but Drag and Drop usually works and is generally easy.
It sounds like your friends just don't like to use drag and drop. Drag and drop in Windows works just as well as you describe it working on the Mac.
When you want to use a feature you haven't tried before, look around. The people who design Mac applications are pretty good at trying to make things esay to figrue out.
You should take the same advice next time you use Windows.
The icons are actually on the right side of the desktop, where they won't be covered up by every window you open!
What does which side the icons are arranged on have to do with anything?
Windows don't automatically fill the entire screen unless you want them to!
Same with Windows.
Error messages, though not always very informative, do not come with a horrible blue screen and do not tell you cryptic things that don't make any sense at all.
Same with Windows.
There are very few crashes for normal users of Macs, and the ones that do occur generally affect only the program crashing rather than bringing down the whole machine.
Same with Windows. And the ability for a program to crash without taking down the OS generally comes from memory protection, something that other operating systems had before MacOS finally added it. I find it ironic therefore that you talk about it as if it is some Mac-only feature.
Another thing that will be difficult to get used to is the lack of viruses.
Well, same with Atari STs I guess.
You can do this on Windows too - DLLs etc can happily live in the application's folder.
So how do shared libraries work on the Mac? Unless there's some clever way of dealing with them, there's no difference between Windows and Mac here, except possibly the non-technical difference that Windows applications are more likely to install DLLs in system directories (which is bad if they get left around, but good if they can be shared between applications).
Less icons. I think is due to the nature of executables but there are fewer icons. In Windows almost every file is an icon (unless hidden). In Mac, the only icons that you see with applications are the ones you need to click on to execute.
Out of curiosity, what if one does want to access or manipulate a particular file associated with an application? I'd rather have optionally hidden than always hidden..
As for hardware installation, Windows 9x was a pain, but under Windows 2000 things are straightforward IME.
People successfully write viruses for *Amigas* for goodness' sake, and where is their 95% market share?
Back when people were writing viruses for Amigas, the Amiga *was* the dominant platform in the home computer market (at least here in Europe), and that's what matters. This is not true for Macs.
I may be wrong, but I don't recall hearing of any new Amiga viruses in the last few years.
The fee for source is the reasonable fee for physical redistribution.
That only applies if you are providing source separately to a binary which has been released - in that case, you clearly aren't allowed to charge whatever you like.
But that's a different matter from charging for both the sources and binary together. My understand was that there was no limit on this (though of course, once one person has bought it, they are free to give it to whoever they want).
Whats so special about musisicans, that the rest of us get paid an hourly rate
The rest of us get paid an hourly rate. What's so special about musicians that they get to be paid until seventy years after their death?
But I do want to try to show a little bit of why some Christians have a problem with D&D. Let's use another example. Maybe this is a little contrived, but say you were passionate about Native American rights. Maybe you are a Native American. And say there is this new RPG called Wild West which a good portion of the game involves killing Native Americans. While its only a game, it is a bit unsettling right?
I didn't think there was anything in D&D about killing Christians, so I don't think that's a fair analogy! And whilst these people seem to think that paganism and the occult are evil, in D&D you tend to play on the side of "Good", battling against "Evil". So I don't think that it is reasonably to have any issues with D&D because of this.
I can understand that Christians may dislike the fact that it portrays religions and Gods other than Christianity. But even though I may understand that this is the reason, that doesn't mean I think it is valid or reasonable; personally I think the world would be a much better place if people were tolerant of each others' religions, rather than branding them as evil.
I can understand that a Christian might choose not to play D&D because of this (although even then, I don't think it follows, as you say people can separate their true beliefs from playing something which is fantasy), but it's another thing entirely to force your religion upon others, and suggest that they are wrong to play.
Except unlike Windows, a six year old Mac doesn't even have memory protection, so the amount of security offered is limited. It's also susceptible to viruses, and you have to always run as "root". The only possible advantage it would have is security through obscurity, but then you've got all the disadvantages of using an obscure OS too, not to mention that that advantage is hardly exclusive to Macs.
The rest of your points are subjective opinions with no examples or evidence to back them up; on the other hand, I found MacOS to be the most painful OS I ever had to use - but I at least acknowledge this as opinion and not fact.
But quite why someone would bother with a six year old system if they were buying a new computer. And please don't tell me that your point was that a Mac of today is better than the Windows of six years old..
Windows 98 wasn't secure. "Press ESC instead of putting in your password". You do remember?
Did Microsoft ever claim that this was to secure the computer?
I thought it was pretty obvious that the password was to log onto a network. That's what I used it for, and pressing escape wouldn't let me still log onto the network. It would however let me use my computer without logging onto the network if I wished, which is an obvious feature to have.
Did System 7 have password protection?
Because the claim of theism is that there _is_ a true evil.
"Evil" doesn't just mean in the sense of absolute true evil - it can be used to refer to anything which you view as being particularly wrong.
The claim of atheism is that there's nothing but matter, and we just happen to be interesting clumps of matter.
Rubbish. Atheists don't believe in god, end of story. Even science acknowledges there is more than "clumps of matter" - eg, space, time, gravity, all of which seem to be very strange things that require a greater explanation than simply a space filled with "clumps of matter". It may be in time that we can start to understand what causes consciousness too.
I don't see how you go from believing that we are just interesting clumps of matter to believing that it actually matters which side of the fence you are on in dealing w/ these different clumps of matter.
Well, for example:
I believe these "clumps of matter" are sentient and are capable of feeling pain and suffering. I believe that these sets of actions cause pain and suffering to these clumps of matter, so I believe that these actions are wrong.
Ah right. Well the point probably comes down to the definition of spiritual. People can and do believe in sentience without believing it comes from anything supernatural or god-like. Other definitions of spiritual include things which aren't tangible or material - in which case, there is no reason why an atheist can't believe that some things (eg, love, sentience) are spriritual.
When I say "opinion", I don't mean "a matter of opinion in the same sense as your favourite colour", I mean in the sense that they have thought about the issue.
An atheist using the term "evil" because he feels certain that a particular deed is wrong is no different from a theist doing so. After all, there are many different religions with different opinions on what God supposedly says, so why do they use the term "evil", when they only have a different opinion?
I'm confused - atheism is to do with belief in God (ie, not having any), and nothing to do with belief in free will.
I don't know enough on pantheism to comment - if pantheists don't believe in god either, then I'd say that makes panstheism a subset of atheism. If pantheists do believe in god, then an atheism isn't going to be a pantheist.
I don't know what causes consciousness, but I believe whatever it is can be answered without saying "God did it", just as I believe is the case with every other thing in this Universe.
That's the problem. Some people's souls say nothing. Does that mean that nothing is right or wrong? The term "evil" signifies that it should be publicly obvious or at least discoverable when someone is doing an evil act. But if good/evil right/wrong are personal decisions, then really "fighting evil" makes no sense, it's actually just "fighting _them_" (whoever 'them' is - because for them, you are evil).
The sort of person who has no opinion on what is right or wrong is probably not the sort of person to use the word "evil", or if he did, he'd be wrong to do so.
But this is irrelevant unless you have evidence that RMS is one such person. People in general, atheists included, do have an opinion on right and wrong.
My reason for right/wrong is based on the effects on people. So for example, if I see someone causing harm to someone else, I may view that as wrong, and perhaps even view them as 'evil'.
Read this post again - you still seem to be under the mistaken impression that atheism is about believing that people are unthinking machines that do what they're programmed to do.
It's hard to call something "morality" that is just "psychological happenstance".
No harder than calling something "morality" that is just religion. If you're discussing what is right or wrong, then it's morality, whatever system you use to come to your conclusions.
If you believe that X is "psychological happenstance" it's hard to say that someone _else_ is evil just because they happened to have a different psychological happenstance than you do, since it's just environmental anyway.
Except it's not just environment - many atheists believe in free will.
Why should they care whether you trust them or not?
Exactly, they probably don't. So it's a good idea to hand over control of blocking sites to an organisation that, as you say, doesn't care about whether people trust them to being doing a good job or not?
And surely video recordings are a lot harder to tamper with, where as without them a corrupt police officer could just make up what you were doing.