The point is, this man faces possible criminal charges for his behavior, and some of his probably non-criminal behavior is being plastered all over the press before he gets any trial. That information can seriously influence a jury, even though it's not relevant to any of the crimes of which he's accused. So their idiocy is relevant in the press, if not in court. So long as one side gets to conduct a pre-trial hearing in the newspapers, both should. If anything, the U.S. system says the accused has more rights than the accusers, not less.
It's never insane to not be on fire. On the other hand, I stuck through 23 years of monogamous marriage, and my ex-wife and I have been faithful to each other for four years since the divorce, AFAIK (I'd remarry her, but we seem to be doing much better now that we don't have any promises or obligations to). That's definitely insane. Fortunately from the fire standpoint, her name's not Bob.
If you use the scissors as a weapon, they become a weapon. Threatening with them makes you guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, not some kind of fictional 'assault with a tool of the trade'. It doesn't matter what else you do or don't do with them. That's irrelevant. I own a hunting rifle. If I use it to threaten somebody, it's aggrevated assault, and the fact that the rifle's normal purpose is hunting instead of combat means diddly to a judge.
It's nice you know all about what type I am, and how I plan to use my UID. What I am is a guy who knows that the moment you give the reasoning "I did it because I won't be intimidated" to a cop, you WILL end up in prison. Until now, you haven't been talking about having to poke a hole because it was the last fallback option, and as far as I can see, you're still not committing to using less potentially lethal methods first. You're not posting about what you would do if he succeeded at restraining you, but if he merely threatened to or attempted it. You're supporting making holes in people because of your reluctance to back down first. I gave you some good advice, advice that if you listen may keep you from serving time. You want to get angry at me for that, you've just proved what low life scum you are. So go to prison, see if I care anymore.
By this post, you're claiming your saying 'poking a hole in someone', or 'opening their eyes' with a sharp object is somehow different from my responding with terms that describe how that violence will be viewed legally. So just what do you think a cop or a jury will call you trying to poke holes in people? Remember, either you leave him alive and he tells the court his side, or you kill him and he becomes evidence and not a plantiff. There is no 'He's dead, but the grand jury immediately looks at lesser charges than home invasion and homicide.". That alternative doesn't exist. You leave him alive, he's gonna swear he didn't do anything to provoke you. Normally, if he's the home owner and you aren't, the cops will arrest you and not him, barring something very obvious such as severe intoxication. There is nothing you can say, especially if he calls the cops first, but usually even if you do, that ensures the cops will also arrest him and follow up on your counter claim. He's bleeding, they will usually transport him to the hospital and you to jail. You won't be able to make any claim to the cops that would force them to do a blood alcohol test or something that might help you while it's still meaningful. You probably won't even be able to get them to photograph the bruises where he grabbed your arm, unless HE insists on it because he's gonna claim he grabbed you AFTER you started swinging scissors at him. That's most states. Look up the laws for Florida or Texas to see your worst case scenario.
It's reasonable to infer that most, or at least many, of the posts from disgruntled ex-readers are like the ones we see. That may or may not actually be the case. There are possible advantages to convincing many slashdot readers that the system, su generis, tends to self select against real idiots. One of these is it lets the editors avoid having to 'fix' things by claiming they aren't broken. These examples could be the worst and many others could have offered much more valid criticisms. Or, they could be pretty typical. Or the editors could actually have picked ones that weren't as bad as the worst, either for spelling or logically speaking (although this last looks highly unlikely). Take the whole thing with a grain of salt.
By definition "Theft of Music" is stealing. Copyright infringement isn't theft. Don't like that? Argue with the U. S. Congress. They carefully put copyright law in Title 17 of the U.S. Legal code. The just as carefully put all theft related law in a different whole title. That title is the one reserved for ALL normally criminal violations, as it says right at the start of the code, so the U. S. congress thinks copyright infringement isn't theft AND isn't necessarily criminal at all. Argue with the Supreme Court. They ruled that individual states can't enforce copyright, so if violations were theft, they would be taking away the right of the individual states to stop a type of theft happening in their own physical jurisdiction. The Supreme Court has already clarified that that is not what they did. Argue with the Constitution. It uses the phrase "for a limited time". If violation equaled theft, then the law would be saying there is a type of theft where objects become too old to be protected under law, just from age and not from any loss of value. Argue with the Berne treaty. If violation is theft, then what's all that bit in the treaty about non-criminal violation? Non-criminal theft? That's an oxymoron for sure.
If you really believe copyright violation is theft, then you need to get up impeachment proceedings against at least four of the current supreme court justices and over 40 still active congressmen who voted on these laws in the 80's and 90's. Depending on just which decisions you would rate as coddling thieves, that could be all the SCOTUS and over 250 active congress-members. You also need to impeach the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, and possibly several members of the cabinet for negotiating and signing various treaties and such. There are at least 10 currently serving ambassadors and their immediate staff that you need to get removed from office too, and various other functionaries. You probably should prosecute a large number of people now out of office, or at least support civil suits for denial of due process against many of them. You also need to get a constitutional amendment passed. If you aren't working for any of this, you don't really believe copyright violation is theft, or you lack the stones to speak truth to power. It's easy to harangue a bunch of rank and file people on slashdot - but if you really mean it, tell the big dogs off.
Scissors do not equal a tool of the trade. The moment you make a threat to use them as a weapon, they are a weapon. You're talking about how you won't be intimidated. You're in their home. That means, 90% of the time, they go instinctual mode, feel they have to escalate, to defend their home, so you end up either dead, or charged with murder. You tell the jury the dead homeowner made a verbal threat to keep you there, you look like you are lying and that same jury opts for lethal injection instead of 15 to life. You manage to just wound him, he lies through his teeth, there's forensic evidence of an assault with a deadly in the victim's home to settle the question of who's word can be trusted, and you get 2 to 10. The other 10%, the homeowner does the sensible thing and runs. (What, you're gonna keep them there?). Then the swat team shows up, and you get carried out in a body bag. I don't see any wins for you in that list, nada, zip, zero. Oh, and YOU NEED TO BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY, Mr. Internet tough guy.
The problem is, we can't know what she said. Her word against his, with apparently no evidence a judge could use to decide who is telling the truth. If only there were a legal principle that says courts aren't supposed to waste their time and our taxes if there's no evidence.
And most people lived in small isolated groups, often without enough contact for an STD to spread from one group to another before it instead wiped the first group out.
Working with closely related vole species which share a lot of environmental adaptations, but respond differently to one specific chemical? Sounds like a fair way of getting a doubleblind test environment and generating multiple control groups to help assure the results are meaningful and some other hypothesi can genuinely be discarded. Unfortunately, any experiment where the researcher starts with genetically engineered voles also sounds like the last phrase in the proposal should be "Bwaa-haa-haa-haa... and then I shall rule the world, as is my right!" Just something about genetically engineered voles I guess.
I just looked around - I'm in an air conditioned office, no sources of ignition around me, sitting cool and comfortable and extremely not on fire... No wait, Bob just lit a cigarette, so I'm down to thoroughly not on fire... No, Bob's running around with his tie in flames right now, so I guess I'm moderately not on fire... Whoops, dodging a flaming Bob, but I'm still marginally not on fire...
I really doubt that most of these people are reacting to 'excessive' government taxation, because most of them I've met are too dumb to either organize a Robin Hood style movement or to even join or covertly support one. I sometimes prepare taxes commercially, and I've had several people I didn't know from Adam, act honestly amazed that I wouldn't help them flat out lie, and risk 10 years plus in jail, to "do them a little favor". I half expected one of them to ask me to just rob a bank for him and give him all the money, the way he was going. I've had one such customer announce loud enough that 15 other people in the waiting room could hear it, that he wanted me to help him claim 30 American Indian employees he didn't actually have working for his mom and pop grocery business, and offer to present me with a list of names like 'Running Deer' and 'Singing Bear' if I could just give him a few minutes, all so he could get a credit that his scheme wouldn't have actually qualified him for. I am legally required to respect the confidentiality of my customers, even if I end up turning away their business, but there is no law that says those other 15 people can't tell everything they know to the IRS and shoot for that 10% reward they would get on successful prosecution.
These people, by and large, are not tax rebels, instead they would try to cheat their way out of anything remotely possible, and usually have no idea what the limits are.
Recently, actor Michael Caine was stopped and detained for special evaluation before being allowed to board a plane in the U. S.. He'd had to deal with a business matter, the delay caused him to be separated from his wife, who went ahead with the luggage, and he got a new ticket just to catch up to her. So, he was a solo traveler, foreign national, had no luggage, and had a 1 way ticket. Arguably, if Caine wasn't somebody well known, he would most likely have ended up on a permanent list. The no-fly lists and other special lists get full because the criteria are at least this broad, and the criteria for getting people off the list aren't.
If we want to take 250,000 people off the lists in one swoop, take all the names of people reported by their spouses or the relevant lawyers, during a divorce battle, off (at least unless there is a restraining order that alleges violent intent exists for the person in question).
It always amazed me how many people learned to quote "judge not, lest ye be judged..." but never noticed they were quoting only half a sentence ("... and as ye have judged others."). You're right, it isn't smart to judge, at least without considering very carefully how the same standard you are using would sting if it was applied to you or people you like. A lot of 'walk a mile in the other guy's shoes first' type philosophy underlies this, and yet it's amazing how many people don't pick up on it. Fair judgment is hard, it has potentially horrific consequences if abused, and we should all dread having to make judgments on what must always be, for humans, less than complete data.
So, if it does great evil evil, you just redefine it to be a religion, and ergo, all religions produce great evil. Circular reasoning. Atheists are always good by your definition, so any time an atheist does evil, you throw him out of the club.
You know, if I pointed to infamous Christians such as Geoffrey Amhurst (who gave smallpox loaded blankets to the Amerinds) and said they weren't real Christians, I'd be called a hypocrite for trying to include only the 'good' ones.
Paul, in his letters to the church in Corinth, made a lengthy argument about faith. He pointed out for example, that some of the opposition were saying (my paraphrase) "You can see how disease, aging and death destroy a person's body, and if they have these soul things you Christians claim, those are destroyed too." Paul said (again paraphrased): "But you have seen counter-examples, known people who suffered from age and disease, but sometimes they showed increasing wisdom, dedication, determination or compassion in the process. You have evidence that the soul can sometimes grow even as the body withers, and because of that evidence, you should keep to your faith.". Anyone is welcome to read that part of the New Testament and see if what I have just said is accurate.
A lot (not all, but a lot) of the New Testament use of the word faith is actually like that. Rather than belief without evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, it is much more often used to describe sticking to a belief where there is rational evidence, but it may be either ambiguous, or the arguments on both sides are highly emotional and may influence the Christian regardless of their logical foundation. (And I would assure you that most Christians have significant emotive fear of death regardless of their intellectual position, as do most non-Christians). I'm not nearly as up on the Old Testament, so I couldn't say just how the word 'faith' is used there in various books.
You do know the Soviet Union was officially Atheist? You never saw a news story about them invading anyone? Or how about Pol Pot? Set up a government that was officially, militantly Atheist, killed over 2 million people, particularly over 700,000 who's official 'crime worthy of death' was 'clinging to religions ideology', as written on the orders sentencing them?
I guess nobody ever told you, but in the 20th century, the score for Mass murders, genocides, pomgroms, etc ran (roughly) All Religious governments 21 Million, All Atheist governments 91 Million. Your vaunted Atheists beat the religious groups roughly 4.5 to 1.
I don't know about fraud, but if I remember rightly, there was this case where Texas had descriptions provided in a high school textbook of what the laws in that state said regarding obscenity or sodomy or something like that, and the board that approves textbooks there asked to have the passages relating to Texas's own laws removed. There was some sort of legal challenge, because if a government body takes steps to keep people ignorant of what the law says, then ignorance of the law in theory becomes the legitimate excuse that it isn't ordinarily. I'm wondering if something like that applies here. What happens in law if you are ignorant of a law, not because you didn't bother to find out what the law was, but because you tried, but the same government that enforces that law has lied or hidden the facts?
There are levels to editorializing. Suppose an article covers the recent Russian invasion of Georgia, and stops right after mentioning the statements Russia made regarding Poland and deployment of ABMs. It's one thing if the editor points out that invading Poland was once a 'straw that broke the camel's back' when it came to a regional conflict escalating into a 'World War', but it's quite another if the editor starts referring to Putin as "Put-hitler".
Plus, this particular story lends itself to more objective reporting. The submitter could still have made the claim that software isn't capable of determining something as nuanced as fair use, and this still requires a human to make the final decision, and a very high majority of potential readers would agree. There was no need to use loaded words such as 'buggy'.
Whoops, dropped an 'i' in an important place. That's supposed to be Anti-Gnostics, not Formicidae-Gnostics, who presumably have veiled knowledge of Edward Wilson or something.
A reasonable position. I don't agree with it all, but reasonable, none-the-less. My biggest disagreement is that I think there is a part of my consiousness, which may be magical but is more likely something in keeping with the way the physical universe works and thus the word magical may be perjorative, may connect to a 'ground of being type' creator, and probably does survive death, or at least connects to some other life rather than terminating, if not necessarily to 'life' in a dimension outside of space/time. We'll probably just have to disagree on that, but if I'm right, at least you will find out in time, and there's no reason to think you will go to hell for not agreeing earlier, so no hurries.
While there is not much historical evidence at all for Jesus himself (outside the Bible, which is definitely not the best historical source on some other points), the historical evidence on Paul strongly suggests he was a Gnostic of sorts, and that he didn't write nearly all the stuff attributed to him, and in fact, people who disagreed with him after he died, forged some things to borrow his authority for literalist Ant-Gnostic arguments. Since the parts that look at least doubtful are mostly the same ones that make Paul look like an anti-sex fundie nutcase, (not always, but mostly), I'd cut him some slack.
(For ref: you might try Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, particularly their books "The Laughing Jesus" and "The Jesus Mysteries".).
Slashdot Mirror
The point is, this man faces possible criminal charges for his behavior, and some of his probably non-criminal behavior is being plastered all over the press before he gets any trial. That information can seriously influence a jury, even though it's not relevant to any of the crimes of which he's accused. So their idiocy is relevant in the press, if not in court. So long as one side gets to conduct a pre-trial hearing in the newspapers, both should. If anything, the U.S. system says the accused has more rights than the accusers, not less.
Yes, much, much better than on Windows. Now go tell everybody who likes Pr0n why they need to switch to Linux immediately.
Well, it looks like it's hosed. You should probably reinstall the OS.
Why am I picturing Clippy saying that?
It's never insane to not be on fire. On the other hand, I stuck through 23 years of monogamous marriage, and my ex-wife and I have been faithful to each other for four years since the divorce, AFAIK (I'd remarry her, but we seem to be doing much better now that we don't have any promises or obligations to). That's definitely insane. Fortunately from the fire standpoint, her name's not Bob.
If you use the scissors as a weapon, they become a weapon. Threatening with them makes you guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, not some kind of fictional 'assault with a tool of the trade'. It doesn't matter what else you do or don't do with them. That's irrelevant. I own a hunting rifle. If I use it to threaten somebody, it's aggrevated assault, and the fact that the rifle's normal purpose is hunting instead of combat means diddly to a judge.
It's nice you know all about what type I am, and how I plan to use my UID. What I am is a guy who knows that the moment you give the reasoning "I did it because I won't be intimidated" to a cop, you WILL end up in prison. Until now, you haven't been talking about having to poke a hole because it was the last fallback option, and as far as I can see, you're still not committing to using less potentially lethal methods first. You're not posting about what you would do if he succeeded at restraining you, but if he merely threatened to or attempted it. You're supporting making holes in people because of your reluctance to back down first. I gave you some good advice, advice that if you listen may keep you from serving time. You want to get angry at me for that, you've just proved what low life scum you are. So go to prison, see if I care anymore.
By this post, you're claiming your saying 'poking a hole in someone', or 'opening their eyes' with a sharp object is somehow different from my responding with terms that describe how that violence will be viewed legally. So just what do you think a cop or a jury will call you trying to poke holes in people? Remember, either you leave him alive and he tells the court his side, or you kill him and he becomes evidence and not a plantiff. There is no 'He's dead, but the grand jury immediately looks at lesser charges than home invasion and homicide.". That alternative doesn't exist. You leave him alive, he's gonna swear he didn't do anything to provoke you. Normally, if he's the home owner and you aren't, the cops will arrest you and not him, barring something very obvious such as severe intoxication. There is nothing you can say, especially if he calls the cops first, but usually even if you do, that ensures the cops will also arrest him and follow up on your counter claim. He's bleeding, they will usually transport him to the hospital and you to jail. You won't be able to make any claim to the cops that would force them to do a blood alcohol test or something that might help you while it's still meaningful. You probably won't even be able to get them to photograph the bruises where he grabbed your arm, unless HE insists on it because he's gonna claim he grabbed you AFTER you started swinging scissors at him. That's most states. Look up the laws for Florida or Texas to see your worst case scenario.
It's reasonable to infer that most, or at least many, of the posts from disgruntled ex-readers are like the ones we see. That may or may not actually be the case. There are possible advantages to convincing many slashdot readers that the system, su generis, tends to self select against real idiots. One of these is it lets the editors avoid having to 'fix' things by claiming they aren't broken. These examples could be the worst and many others could have offered much more valid criticisms. Or, they could be pretty typical. Or the editors could actually have picked ones that weren't as bad as the worst, either for spelling or logically speaking (although this last looks highly unlikely). Take the whole thing with a grain of salt.
By definition "Theft of Music" is stealing. Copyright infringement isn't theft.
Don't like that? Argue with the U. S. Congress. They carefully put copyright law in Title 17 of the U.S. Legal code. The just as carefully put all theft related law in a different whole title. That title is the one reserved for ALL normally criminal violations, as it says right at the start of the code, so the U. S. congress thinks copyright infringement isn't theft AND isn't necessarily criminal at all.
Argue with the Supreme Court. They ruled that individual states can't enforce copyright, so if violations were theft, they would be taking away the right of the individual states to stop a type of theft happening in their own physical jurisdiction. The Supreme Court has already clarified that that is not what they did.
Argue with the Constitution. It uses the phrase "for a limited time". If violation equaled theft, then the law would be saying there is a type of theft where objects become too old to be protected under law, just from age and not from any loss of value.
Argue with the Berne treaty. If violation is theft, then what's all that bit in the treaty about non-criminal violation? Non-criminal theft? That's an oxymoron for sure.
If you really believe copyright violation is theft, then you need to get up impeachment proceedings against at least four of the current supreme court justices and over 40 still active congressmen who voted on these laws in the 80's and 90's. Depending on just which decisions you would rate as coddling thieves, that could be all the SCOTUS and over 250 active congress-members. You also need to impeach the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, and possibly several members of the cabinet for negotiating and signing various treaties and such. There are at least 10 currently serving ambassadors and their immediate staff that you need to get removed from office too, and various other functionaries. You probably should prosecute a large number of people now out of office, or at least support civil suits for denial of due process against many of them. You also need to get a constitutional amendment passed. If you aren't working for any of this, you don't really believe copyright violation is theft, or you lack the stones to speak truth to power. It's easy to harangue a bunch of rank and file people on slashdot - but if you really mean it, tell the big dogs off.
Scissors do not equal a tool of the trade. The moment you make a threat to use them as a weapon, they are a weapon. You're talking about how you won't be intimidated. You're in their home. That means, 90% of the time, they go instinctual mode, feel they have to escalate, to defend their home, so you end up either dead, or charged with murder. You tell the jury the dead homeowner made a verbal threat to keep you there, you look like you are lying and that same jury opts for lethal injection instead of 15 to life. You manage to just wound him, he lies through his teeth, there's forensic evidence of an assault with a deadly in the victim's home to settle the question of who's word can be trusted, and you get 2 to 10. The other 10%, the homeowner does the sensible thing and runs. (What, you're gonna keep them there?). Then the swat team shows up, and you get carried out in a body bag. I don't see any wins for you in that list, nada, zip, zero.
Oh, and YOU NEED TO BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY, Mr. Internet tough guy.
The problem is, we can't know what she said. Her word against his, with apparently no evidence a judge could use to decide who is telling the truth. If only there were a legal principle that says courts aren't supposed to waste their time and our taxes if there's no evidence.
And most people lived in small isolated groups, often without enough contact for an STD to spread from one group to another before it instead wiped the first group out.
Working with closely related vole species which share a lot of environmental adaptations, but respond differently to one specific chemical? Sounds like a fair way of getting a doubleblind test environment and generating multiple control groups to help assure the results are meaningful and some other hypothesi can genuinely be discarded. ... and then I shall rule the world, as is my right!" Just something about genetically engineered voles I guess.
Unfortunately, any experiment where the researcher starts with genetically engineered voles also sounds like the last phrase in the proposal should be "Bwaa-haa-haa-haa
I just looked around - I'm in an air conditioned office, no sources of ignition around me, sitting cool and comfortable and extremely not on fire... No wait, Bob just lit a cigarette, so I'm down to thoroughly not on fire... No, Bob's running around with his tie in flames right now, so I guess I'm moderately not on fire... Whoops, dodging a flaming Bob, but I'm still marginally not on fire...
I really doubt that most of these people are reacting to 'excessive' government taxation, because most of them I've met are too dumb to either organize a Robin Hood style movement or to even join or covertly support one. I sometimes prepare taxes commercially, and I've had several people I didn't know from Adam, act honestly amazed that I wouldn't help them flat out lie, and risk 10 years plus in jail, to "do them a little favor". I half expected one of them to ask me to just rob a bank for him and give him all the money, the way he was going. I've had one such customer announce loud enough that 15 other people in the waiting room could hear it, that he wanted me to help him claim 30 American Indian employees he didn't actually have working for his mom and pop grocery business, and offer to present me with a list of names like 'Running Deer' and 'Singing Bear' if I could just give him a few minutes, all so he could get a credit that his scheme wouldn't have actually qualified him for. I am legally required to respect the confidentiality of my customers, even if I end up turning away their business, but there is no law that says those other 15 people can't tell everything they know to the IRS and shoot for that 10% reward they would get on successful prosecution.
These people, by and large, are not tax rebels, instead they would try to cheat their way out of anything remotely possible, and usually have no idea what the limits are.
Recently, actor Michael Caine was stopped and detained for special evaluation before being allowed to board a plane in the U. S.. He'd had to deal with a business matter, the delay caused him to be separated from his wife, who went ahead with the luggage, and he got a new ticket just to catch up to her. So, he was a solo traveler, foreign national, had no luggage, and had a 1 way ticket. Arguably, if Caine wasn't somebody well known, he would most likely have ended up on a permanent list. The no-fly lists and other special lists get full because the criteria are at least this broad, and the criteria for getting people off the list aren't.
If we want to take 250,000 people off the lists in one swoop, take all the names of people reported by their spouses or the relevant lawyers, during a divorce battle, off (at least unless there is a restraining order that alleges violent intent exists for the person in question).
It always amazed me how many people learned to quote "judge not, lest ye be judged..." but never noticed they were quoting only half a sentence ("... and as ye have judged others."). You're right, it isn't smart to judge, at least without considering very carefully how the same standard you are using would sting if it was applied to you or people you like. A lot of 'walk a mile in the other guy's shoes first' type philosophy underlies this, and yet it's amazing how many people don't pick up on it. Fair judgment is hard, it has potentially horrific consequences if abused, and we should all dread having to make judgments on what must always be, for humans, less than complete data.
So, if it does great evil evil, you just redefine it to be a religion, and ergo, all religions produce great evil. Circular reasoning. Atheists are always good by your definition, so any time an atheist does evil, you throw him out of the club.
You know, if I pointed to infamous Christians such as Geoffrey Amhurst (who gave smallpox loaded blankets to the Amerinds) and said they weren't real Christians, I'd be called a hypocrite for trying to include only the 'good' ones.
Paul, in his letters to the church in Corinth, made a lengthy argument about faith. He pointed out for example, that some of the opposition were saying (my paraphrase) "You can see how disease, aging and death destroy a person's body, and if they have these soul things you Christians claim, those are destroyed too." Paul said (again paraphrased): "But you have seen counter-examples, known people who suffered from age and disease, but sometimes they showed increasing wisdom, dedication, determination or compassion in the process. You have evidence that the soul can sometimes grow even as the body withers, and because of that evidence, you should keep to your faith.". Anyone is welcome to read that part of the New Testament and see if what I have just said is accurate.
A lot (not all, but a lot) of the New Testament use of the word faith is actually like that. Rather than belief without evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, it is much more often used to describe sticking to a belief where there is rational evidence, but it may be either ambiguous, or the arguments on both sides are highly emotional and may influence the Christian regardless of their logical foundation. (And I would assure you that most Christians have significant emotive fear of death regardless of their intellectual position, as do most non-Christians). I'm not nearly as up on the Old Testament, so I couldn't say just how the word 'faith' is used there in various books.
You do know the Soviet Union was officially Atheist? You never saw a news story about them invading anyone? Or how about Pol Pot? Set up a government that was officially, militantly Atheist, killed over 2 million people, particularly over 700,000 who's official 'crime worthy of death' was 'clinging to religions ideology', as written on the orders sentencing them?
I guess nobody ever told you, but in the 20th century, the score for Mass murders, genocides, pomgroms, etc ran (roughly) All Religious governments 21 Million, All Atheist governments 91 Million. Your vaunted Atheists beat the religious groups roughly 4.5 to 1.
So, you believe your spelling mistakes will come back to you, threefold? That's a safe bet for Slashdot.
I don't know about fraud, but if I remember rightly, there was this case where Texas had descriptions provided in a high school textbook of what the laws in that state said regarding obscenity or sodomy or something like that, and the board that approves textbooks there asked to have the passages relating to Texas's own laws removed. There was some sort of legal challenge, because if a government body takes steps to keep people ignorant of what the law says, then ignorance of the law in theory becomes the legitimate excuse that it isn't ordinarily. I'm wondering if something like that applies here. What happens in law if you are ignorant of a law, not because you didn't bother to find out what the law was, but because you tried, but the same government that enforces that law has lied or hidden the facts?
There are levels to editorializing. Suppose an article covers the recent Russian invasion of Georgia, and stops right after mentioning the statements Russia made regarding Poland and deployment of ABMs. It's one thing if the editor points out that invading Poland was once a 'straw that broke the camel's back' when it came to a regional conflict escalating into a 'World War', but it's quite another if the editor starts referring to Putin as "Put-hitler".
Plus, this particular story lends itself to more objective reporting. The submitter could still have made the claim that software isn't capable of determining something as nuanced as fair use, and this still requires a human to make the final decision, and a very high majority of potential readers would agree. There was no need to use loaded words such as 'buggy'.
Whoops, dropped an 'i' in an important place. That's supposed to be Anti-Gnostics, not Formicidae-Gnostics, who presumably have veiled knowledge of Edward Wilson or something.
A reasonable position. I don't agree with it all, but reasonable, none-the-less. My biggest disagreement is that I think there is a part of my consiousness, which may be magical but is more likely something in keeping with the way the physical universe works and thus the word magical may be perjorative, may connect to a 'ground of being type' creator, and probably does survive death, or at least connects to some other life rather than terminating, if not necessarily to 'life' in a dimension outside of space/time. We'll probably just have to disagree on that, but if I'm right, at least you will find out in time, and there's no reason to think you will go to hell for not agreeing earlier, so no hurries.
While there is not much historical evidence at all for Jesus himself (outside the Bible, which is definitely not the best historical source on some other points), the historical evidence on Paul strongly suggests he was a Gnostic of sorts, and that he didn't write nearly all the stuff attributed to him, and in fact, people who disagreed with him after he died, forged some things to borrow his authority for literalist Ant-Gnostic arguments. Since the parts that look at least doubtful are mostly the same ones that make Paul look like an anti-sex fundie nutcase, (not always, but mostly), I'd cut him some slack.
(For ref: you might try Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, particularly their books "The Laughing Jesus" and "The Jesus Mysteries".).
No, but I was the guy who shot that idiot with the boom box, right after Kirk and Spock got off the bus.