I'd have to disagree with using a GPS as being harmful. I often will set my course before my destination and then dock my phone so that I can glance at it if I need to while getting from point A to point B. It helps me know what lane to be in and what to expect.
Classic "Chewbacca defense". When all else fails, confuse them. First, you state that I'm being purposefully deceptive by not telling people what my religious beliefs are. I don't think that knowing my religious beliefs strengthens, weakens, or changes the argument. My statement that people who disagree with the majority often are censored and hated upon should stand regardless if I'm a Christian, atheist, or whatever. I provided two examples and one of them did deal with religion, so you got hung up on that. If you must know, I am a Christian, but I only reveal that to dismiss your personal attacks against me.
First you use weasel words like "most", "many", etc... You use these words to attribute your facts to me with an escape route in case I come back and say, "Well actually..." So I wouldn't suggest crying about deception while being deceptive. But since your are talking about me when you use those words, I will reject each one of them.
1.) I haven't thought long and hard about the claims Christianity, I have never checked, etc....
I would beg to differ. I'm not going to turn this into a debate about whether or not God is real so I won't present the evidence here, but I have thought and continue to think long and hard about the claims of religion. Influences that have lead me to this conclusion include Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Hugh Ross, C. S. Lewis, etc... Yes, I purposely left a few more controversial names off in order to not distract from my original point that dissenting opinions beget hate. I put in my homework.
2.) I believe in the 'god' of the family I was raised in.
Seriously? I was not raised in a Christian home, but rather a messed up broken home. I don't believe in the god that says it's okay to beat your spouse and abuse her. I don't believe in the god that says it's okay to engage in destructive behavior that ruins lives. I don't believe in whatever god they followed. And even if I did, this is a textbook example of the genetic fallacy.
3.) I've never seen an exorcist. The Bible mentions exorcism. Therefore the Bible is obviously wrong.
Better question - Have I ever seen manna? The Bible mentions manna. Why hasn't manna been seen since the Exodus? Obviously it never existed, right? This is exactly the same kind of nonintellectual argument that some Christians make when they say, "We can't find the missing gap therefore evolution isn't real." It doesn't work for the Christian and it doesn't work for you. I could go on this long tangent about the doctrine of angels, but again that deviates from my point.
The point is, is that you cannot make these kinds of assumptions about people and then respond with hate or ignorance. Yes I'd rather not see any religious or political talk on Slashdot, but I'm going to step in and correct ignorant comments such as, "Christians all believe X" or "Religion is the cause of all wars" since they simply aren't true. And why defend bad arguments anyway? If you want to convince someone of an idea, wouldn't you want to argue against what they actually believe rather than a distorted caricature?
Right, because I wrote that it will get modded down. If I say that it will then it typically won't. So basically they're trying to prove me wrong by modding up instead of down. I simply don't buy the idea of the "no substance" argument and here's why. This is how Slashdot typically is IMHO (and yes, I'm exaggerating a bit):
Christians are dumb (Score:6, amazing!!!) Flying Spaghetti Monster! Woo! Turtles all the way down!! Yeah! Re: Christians are dumb (Score:-72, religious moron) That's just a caricature of Christians. Many Christians such as ____ and ____ feel differently. Here's what they actually think... Re: Christians are dumb (Score:9001, over nine-thousand) Ur stupid. You think that's a valid proof of god Re: Christians are dumb (Score:-pi x infinity, why does he bother) I wasn't trying to prove God. I just was saying that this isn't what Christians actually believe.
Other than the scores, I'm actually not far off. I once was told that my proofs for God was so full of logical fallacies when in fact I wasn't trying to prove God, but rather correct a misconception. The poster went on to explain how sad it was that ignorant people like me exists. If that isn't hate, I don't know what is.
AC that you linked to was obviously trolling to make a point. He was just promoting the caricature of religious people that sites like Slashdot tend to promote. This is exactly the kind of hate that I'm talking about. He pretends to be a conservative making anti-semitic remarks to "prove" that religious people are all ignorant hateful people. The irony is that rather than proving this lame caricature, he proves to anyone who can discern that the obvious troll was being obvious that this kind hate and bigotry exists on sites like this.
Obvious troll is obvious. You're baiting people to disagree with your anti-semetic attitude so that you can reply, "See!!!oneone111!!! You're a hypocrite since you want to censor me, but you don't want to censor religious people!!!"
Comments are mostly an avenue of hate and tyranny
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· Score: 4, Interesting
This is likely to get modded down to "-1 Disagree", but I guess that's the point. If someone says something positive about religion, protecting their children's innocence, etc... it gets modded down. Don't think like the loud members of the group? Here's a mod down for you. Think that the teleology of the universe points to a cosmic designer? Here's a "-1 Disagree" for you and a bunch of hate to go with it. You must think like the hive mind or go unheard.
Comment moderation like that on Reddit and Slashdot censors dissension and encourages hate.
Way to start this thread off with hate and ridicule. There are people of all walks of life, including Christians, who believe in climate change. Likewise, there are people of all walks of life who do not. I personally think that all people, regardless of religious affiliation or lack-of, should be concerned with keeping the planet healthy. Many do. Don't confuse the "I wanna win votes so I'm going to pretend to be a Christian" politician be confused with actual Christians.
I take it you're not an engineer? What you basically said was, "They should have designed DVDs to play in VHS players". It wasn't a trick. It was, if you want to play games that look better and have more content then you have to upgrade your hardware. I mean, if they could somehow get 3DS quality games (even without 3D) running on the DS, I think they would have just done it. It's nice having a 100 million users out there.
As for being dead, you bought one didn't you? My two kids each have one. The games are fun. Even if someone could somehow get an exact clone of a Nintendo game on iOS or Android, it just wouldn't be fun since tablets aren't really designed to play those kinds of games.
I will also add that in the next 50 days I am far more likely to get attacked by a tiger than in the past 50 days.... because I didn't get attacked by a tiger in the last 50 days. Obviously the next 50k miles will have a greater chance of an accident happening since we know for certain that an accident didn't happen in the previous 50k miles.
As for the dice experiment, it's what's known as a thought experiment. Thus I get to set the parameters. If I want a perfectly balance die, I have one. I don't have to prove that my imaginary die is perfectly balanced. It just is. The point isn't to imagine a real die, but rather a device that will randomly give me a number between 1-6 with the odds of getting any one number be exactly 1 out of 6.
The idea of mechanical failures is interesting, but it doesn't really change thing since I assume the aggregated data includes both people who take care of their car for a long time and people who switch cars every 3 years.
That isn't how statistics work. The one accident in 250k is an aggregate of a lot of data. It doesn't mean that it is expected that after you get to 250k and beyond you're more likely to get into an accident.
To demonstrate if I threw a perfectly balanced die 600 times, statistically I should roll a one 100 times. However if I have actually rolled the die 500 times and have not gotten a 1 (highly unlikely but possible) it would be absurd for me to believe that I would likely get a one the next 100 time. No, for the next 100 rolls I should expect to get about 16 or 17 ones.
I'm not sure where anybody has gotten the idea that code is always going to be perfect the first time through even with the most cautious developer. Programming is complex and, especially in the field of security, new breaches are invented all the time. For some, it may not be the developer's code at all, but a library or runtime that the code uses. At the end of the day, programmers who deal with the most complex issues are most likely going to make a mistake somewhere in their code. Yes unit testing and functional testing can mitigate that, but an expectation for code to be 100% bulletproof 100% of the time is silly.
These are many of the reasons I'm a big fan of Nintendo. They care about the developers, take their time to develop the right product, and don't engage in this microtransaction nonsense. Even with games like Pokémon Rumble U, Nintendo promises that you can see everything there is in the game even if you don't buy their collectible figures. I'm glad Nintendo ignores the investors (iOS!) and the non-Nintendo fans (MMOFPS sports game please!) to make a quality product that doesn't rely on these "shady profits".
I think you demonstrate my point exactly. We remember games like Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy 2. We don't remember "EA Sports Game 2003" or "Random Activision Shooter 5: This time more swearing". Nintendo makes masterpieces where every game stands on their own, even games that are a part of a series. You don't hear people say, "My favorite Boring Doom Clone is _____" Instead they say, "My favorite Zelda game is _____" and you get a variety of answers. The games themselves don't degrade with time.
As far as your "cash-ins" are concern, they are still leaps and bounds better than your run of the mill Take Two M rated game that gets priced to $20 in two months.
Personally, I'm grateful Nintendo is a games first type company. How often do we complain about any industry bending to the shareholders desires for short term profits? Yet you complain about Nintendo not cheapening their IP in order to make tons of money. Nintendo's doing the right thing. It will work for them. If you'll excuse me I've got some Pikmin 3 to anticipate playing this weekend.
Thank you for sharing this, I enjoyed watching it. I will say that Hitchens debated much better than others who have debated Craig. However, I wouldn't say that he "trounced him" or demonstrated that he was "willfully twisting the truth". I would call it a tie as far as debating goes. Hitchens could have tried to offer evidence affirming naturalism. Craig should have understood what Hitchens means by atheism. But what this debate shows is that there are in fact people who build a case for theism not on faith alone or logical fallacies. So the phrase "religion's inherent necessity for irrational belief in the face of empirical evidence to the contrary" isn't perfectly accurate.
Dr. Ross is demonstrates this a lot better (and he doesn't come off as a jerk like Craig does). Dr. Ross is an astrophysicists who runs an organization called "Reasons to Believe". In one of the podcasts that his organization produces, they look at various "empirical evidence" seriously. For example, you don't often hear about Christians discussing things like whether or not humans interbred with Denisovans like you would with RTB. Most Christians would discuss why they haven't interbred. Hitchens in this debate called people like Ross and Craig, "evidentialists".
Basically, I'm saying in a roundabout way that rational thinking and religion are not mutually exclusive. This doesn't prove or disprove a God, but demonstrates that blanket statements about the irrationality of religious people is untenable.
This is the standard answer given by his opponents and the various atheism websites. The reason why they say this is that he's a well prepared masterful debater who points out every. single. logical fallacy in his opponents' arguments. I would agree that he can come off as a jerk, but that doesn't necessarily make his arguments logically fallacious or dishonest. In order to demonstrate that Dr. Craig is dishonest, you would have to provide evidence where Dr. Craig gets up and says something that he simply doesn't believe is true.
I would encourage you to look up people like William Lane Craig or Hugh Ross. You may change your mind that religion necessitates logical fallacies. And I would encourage you to look them up from their point of view rather than the opposing side of view. Craig's organization is called "Reasonable Faith". Ross's organization is called "Reasons To Believe".
I like the part where you back-peddle halfway through your single sentence response.:) All joking aside, I simply do not believe that eliminating religion will eliminate war and bring about this enlightened society where everybody just likes each other. Just as religion has incited some people to war, it also incites people to love. Many charitable organizations, hospitals, and orphanages are run by religious people - far more than ones ran by non religious organizations.
Furthermore, I think blaming all of our woes on any people group (religious people, people of a certain race, people of a certain sexuality, etc...) is dangerous. I'd hope we would have learned our lesson in the 20th century by the atrocities committed by various leaders during the many wars that occurred during that era.
While there's no denying that many wars have been fought under the guise of religion; I'm sure people can make war just fine (and they have in the past) without religion.
I think a specific problem goes like this. I print and store a key. I sell an item such as a home or vehicle and hand over the keys. I then go to the store and reprint the key, now I have an unauthorized key. Yes, if someone wanted to be sneaky they could have just printed an extra key to begin with, but now we have a mechanism where someone could change their mind (like a breakup) and then make a new key.
I completely agree. But I wonder if the reason they cannot differentiate between ads and programs is that they are exposed to them all the time. By keeping my daughter mostly shielded from ads, ads became a stark contrast from the rest of the program when they do come on. We recorded Power Rangers Mega Force on our DVR and whenever a commercial came on my son 3yo would cry because he had watched the previous 20 seasons of Power Rangers ad free. He seriously thought that the show had ended. I think a lot of parents are going ad free, so it should be intriguing to see how these ad free kids turn out. Either they'll be hyper gullible or super savvy.
I see where you are coming from. The concern is that if kids never see ads, how will they recognize ads as adults? While I recognize that, I purposely keep my children ad free as much as possible and its had a lot of positive effects. When my kids go down the cereal aisle at a supermarket, they're not screaming for the brand name cereal like my siblings and I did as children. I'm able to teach them first to look at nutrition labels, how to spot marketing techniques like greenwashing, etc... And now that they are able to think, we can sit down and discuss an advertisement when they show up.
A bit of a story. My 3yo son was playing with an app geared for preschoolers when suddenly a full video toy ad played. He was captivated, thought they were the most amazing toy ever, and began repeating the catchphrase of the ad all day that day. My 6yo daughter sat down with him and said, "That's an ad. It looks cool, but in real life it might not be as much fun as the ad makes it out to be." She understood it.
So my point is to have the parent educate their kids on marketing rather than have them figure it out the hard way by becoming a target of advertising.
Bing is the successor to Microsoft's MSN search tool. Here's a site that will allow you to compare bing to Google. http://www.bingiton.com/. I still use Google since Google tends to get me to technical results faster, but Bing really isn't a bad search engine if you can get past the fact that its done by Microsoft.
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I'd have to disagree with using a GPS as being harmful. I often will set my course before my destination and then dock my phone so that I can glance at it if I need to while getting from point A to point B. It helps me know what lane to be in and what to expect.
Classic "Chewbacca defense". When all else fails, confuse them. First, you state that I'm being purposefully deceptive by not telling people what my religious beliefs are. I don't think that knowing my religious beliefs strengthens, weakens, or changes the argument. My statement that people who disagree with the majority often are censored and hated upon should stand regardless if I'm a Christian, atheist, or whatever. I provided two examples and one of them did deal with religion, so you got hung up on that. If you must know, I am a Christian, but I only reveal that to dismiss your personal attacks against me.
First you use weasel words like "most", "many", etc... You use these words to attribute your facts to me with an escape route in case I come back and say, "Well actually..." So I wouldn't suggest crying about deception while being deceptive. But since your are talking about me when you use those words, I will reject each one of them.
1.) I haven't thought long and hard about the claims Christianity, I have never checked, etc....
I would beg to differ. I'm not going to turn this into a debate about whether or not God is real so I won't present the evidence here, but I have thought and continue to think long and hard about the claims of religion. Influences that have lead me to this conclusion include Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Hugh Ross, C. S. Lewis, etc... Yes, I purposely left a few more controversial names off in order to not distract from my original point that dissenting opinions beget hate. I put in my homework.
2.) I believe in the 'god' of the family I was raised in.
Seriously? I was not raised in a Christian home, but rather a messed up broken home. I don't believe in the god that says it's okay to beat your spouse and abuse her. I don't believe in the god that says it's okay to engage in destructive behavior that ruins lives. I don't believe in whatever god they followed. And even if I did, this is a textbook example of the genetic fallacy.
3.) I've never seen an exorcist. The Bible mentions exorcism. Therefore the Bible is obviously wrong.
Better question - Have I ever seen manna? The Bible mentions manna. Why hasn't manna been seen since the Exodus? Obviously it never existed, right? This is exactly the same kind of nonintellectual argument that some Christians make when they say, "We can't find the missing gap therefore evolution isn't real." It doesn't work for the Christian and it doesn't work for you. I could go on this long tangent about the doctrine of angels, but again that deviates from my point.
The point is, is that you cannot make these kinds of assumptions about people and then respond with hate or ignorance. Yes I'd rather not see any religious or political talk on Slashdot, but I'm going to step in and correct ignorant comments such as, "Christians all believe X" or "Religion is the cause of all wars" since they simply aren't true. And why defend bad arguments anyway? If you want to convince someone of an idea, wouldn't you want to argue against what they actually believe rather than a distorted caricature?
Right, because I wrote that it will get modded down. If I say that it will then it typically won't. So basically they're trying to prove me wrong by modding up instead of down. I simply don't buy the idea of the "no substance" argument and here's why. This is how Slashdot typically is IMHO (and yes, I'm exaggerating a bit):
Christians are dumb (Score:6, amazing!!!)
Flying Spaghetti Monster! Woo! Turtles all the way down!! Yeah!
Re: Christians are dumb (Score:-72, religious moron)
That's just a caricature of Christians. Many Christians such as ____ and ____ feel differently. Here's what they actually think...
Re: Christians are dumb (Score:9001, over nine-thousand)
Ur stupid. You think that's a valid proof of god
Re: Christians are dumb (Score:-pi x infinity, why does he bother)
I wasn't trying to prove God. I just was saying that this isn't what Christians actually believe.
Other than the scores, I'm actually not far off. I once was told that my proofs for God was so full of logical fallacies when in fact I wasn't trying to prove God, but rather correct a misconception. The poster went on to explain how sad it was that ignorant people like me exists. If that isn't hate, I don't know what is.
AC that you linked to was obviously trolling to make a point. He was just promoting the caricature of religious people that sites like Slashdot tend to promote. This is exactly the kind of hate that I'm talking about. He pretends to be a conservative making anti-semitic remarks to "prove" that religious people are all ignorant hateful people. The irony is that rather than proving this lame caricature, he proves to anyone who can discern that the obvious troll was being obvious that this kind hate and bigotry exists on sites like this.
Obvious troll is obvious. You're baiting people to disagree with your anti-semetic attitude so that you can reply, "See!!!oneone111!!! You're a hypocrite since you want to censor me, but you don't want to censor religious people!!!"
This is likely to get modded down to "-1 Disagree", but I guess that's the point. If someone says something positive about religion, protecting their children's innocence, etc... it gets modded down. Don't think like the loud members of the group? Here's a mod down for you. Think that the teleology of the universe points to a cosmic designer? Here's a "-1 Disagree" for you and a bunch of hate to go with it. You must think like the hive mind or go unheard.
Comment moderation like that on Reddit and Slashdot censors dissension and encourages hate.
Didn't we learn from the wars of he 20th century not to hate someone because of a religious belief. Yet you and people like Dawkins encourages that?
Way to start this thread off with hate and ridicule. There are people of all walks of life, including Christians, who believe in climate change. Likewise, there are people of all walks of life who do not. I personally think that all people, regardless of religious affiliation or lack-of, should be concerned with keeping the planet healthy. Many do. Don't confuse the "I wanna win votes so I'm going to pretend to be a Christian" politician be confused with actual Christians.
I take it you're not an engineer? What you basically said was, "They should have designed DVDs to play in VHS players". It wasn't a trick. It was, if you want to play games that look better and have more content then you have to upgrade your hardware. I mean, if they could somehow get 3DS quality games (even without 3D) running on the DS, I think they would have just done it. It's nice having a 100 million users out there.
As for being dead, you bought one didn't you? My two kids each have one. The games are fun. Even if someone could somehow get an exact clone of a Nintendo game on iOS or Android, it just wouldn't be fun since tablets aren't really designed to play those kinds of games.
I will also add that in the next 50 days I am far more likely to get attacked by a tiger than in the past 50 days.... because I didn't get attacked by a tiger in the last 50 days. Obviously the next 50k miles will have a greater chance of an accident happening since we know for certain that an accident didn't happen in the previous 50k miles.
As for the dice experiment, it's what's known as a thought experiment. Thus I get to set the parameters. If I want a perfectly balance die, I have one. I don't have to prove that my imaginary die is perfectly balanced. It just is. The point isn't to imagine a real die, but rather a device that will randomly give me a number between 1-6 with the odds of getting any one number be exactly 1 out of 6.
The idea of mechanical failures is interesting, but it doesn't really change thing since I assume the aggregated data includes both people who take care of their car for a long time and people who switch cars every 3 years.
That isn't how statistics work. The one accident in 250k is an aggregate of a lot of data. It doesn't mean that it is expected that after you get to 250k and beyond you're more likely to get into an accident.
To demonstrate if I threw a perfectly balanced die 600 times, statistically I should roll a one 100 times. However if I have actually rolled the die 500 times and have not gotten a 1 (highly unlikely but possible) it would be absurd for me to believe that I would likely get a one the next 100 time. No, for the next 100 rolls I should expect to get about 16 or 17 ones.
For more information, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy
I'm not sure where anybody has gotten the idea that code is always going to be perfect the first time through even with the most cautious developer. Programming is complex and, especially in the field of security, new breaches are invented all the time. For some, it may not be the developer's code at all, but a library or runtime that the code uses. At the end of the day, programmers who deal with the most complex issues are most likely going to make a mistake somewhere in their code. Yes unit testing and functional testing can mitigate that, but an expectation for code to be 100% bulletproof 100% of the time is silly.
These are many of the reasons I'm a big fan of Nintendo. They care about the developers, take their time to develop the right product, and don't engage in this microtransaction nonsense. Even with games like Pokémon Rumble U, Nintendo promises that you can see everything there is in the game even if you don't buy their collectible figures. I'm glad Nintendo ignores the investors (iOS!) and the non-Nintendo fans (MMOFPS sports game please!) to make a quality product that doesn't rely on these "shady profits".
I think you demonstrate my point exactly. We remember games like Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy 2. We don't remember "EA Sports Game 2003" or "Random Activision Shooter 5: This time more swearing". Nintendo makes masterpieces where every game stands on their own, even games that are a part of a series. You don't hear people say, "My favorite Boring Doom Clone is _____" Instead they say, "My favorite Zelda game is _____" and you get a variety of answers. The games themselves don't degrade with time.
As far as your "cash-ins" are concern, they are still leaps and bounds better than your run of the mill Take Two M rated game that gets priced to $20 in two months.
Nintendo: Doomed since 1991.
Personally, I'm grateful Nintendo is a games first type company. How often do we complain about any industry bending to the shareholders desires for short term profits? Yet you complain about Nintendo not cheapening their IP in order to make tons of money. Nintendo's doing the right thing. It will work for them. If you'll excuse me I've got some Pikmin 3 to anticipate playing this weekend.
Thank you for sharing this, I enjoyed watching it. I will say that Hitchens debated much better than others who have debated Craig. However, I wouldn't say that he "trounced him" or demonstrated that he was "willfully twisting the truth". I would call it a tie as far as debating goes. Hitchens could have tried to offer evidence affirming naturalism. Craig should have understood what Hitchens means by atheism. But what this debate shows is that there are in fact people who build a case for theism not on faith alone or logical fallacies. So the phrase "religion's inherent necessity for irrational belief in the face of empirical evidence to the contrary" isn't perfectly accurate.
Dr. Ross is demonstrates this a lot better (and he doesn't come off as a jerk like Craig does). Dr. Ross is an astrophysicists who runs an organization called "Reasons to Believe". In one of the podcasts that his organization produces, they look at various "empirical evidence" seriously. For example, you don't often hear about Christians discussing things like whether or not humans interbred with Denisovans like you would with RTB. Most Christians would discuss why they haven't interbred. Hitchens in this debate called people like Ross and Craig, "evidentialists".
Basically, I'm saying in a roundabout way that rational thinking and religion are not mutually exclusive. This doesn't prove or disprove a God, but demonstrates that blanket statements about the irrationality of religious people is untenable.
This is the standard answer given by his opponents and the various atheism websites. The reason why they say this is that he's a well prepared masterful debater who points out every. single. logical fallacy in his opponents' arguments. I would agree that he can come off as a jerk, but that doesn't necessarily make his arguments logically fallacious or dishonest. In order to demonstrate that Dr. Craig is dishonest, you would have to provide evidence where Dr. Craig gets up and says something that he simply doesn't believe is true.
I would encourage you to look up people like William Lane Craig or Hugh Ross. You may change your mind that religion necessitates logical fallacies. And I would encourage you to look them up from their point of view rather than the opposing side of view. Craig's organization is called "Reasonable Faith". Ross's organization is called "Reasons To Believe".
I like the part where you back-peddle halfway through your single sentence response. :) All joking aside, I simply do not believe that eliminating religion will eliminate war and bring about this enlightened society where everybody just likes each other. Just as religion has incited some people to war, it also incites people to love. Many charitable organizations, hospitals, and orphanages are run by religious people - far more than ones ran by non religious organizations.
Furthermore, I think blaming all of our woes on any people group (religious people, people of a certain race, people of a certain sexuality, etc...) is dangerous. I'd hope we would have learned our lesson in the 20th century by the atrocities committed by various leaders during the many wars that occurred during that era.
While there's no denying that many wars have been fought under the guise of religion; I'm sure people can make war just fine (and they have in the past) without religion.
I think a specific problem goes like this. I print and store a key. I sell an item such as a home or vehicle and hand over the keys. I then go to the store and reprint the key, now I have an unauthorized key. Yes, if someone wanted to be sneaky they could have just printed an extra key to begin with, but now we have a mechanism where someone could change their mind (like a breakup) and then make a new key.
I completely agree. But I wonder if the reason they cannot differentiate between ads and programs is that they are exposed to them all the time. By keeping my daughter mostly shielded from ads, ads became a stark contrast from the rest of the program when they do come on. We recorded Power Rangers Mega Force on our DVR and whenever a commercial came on my son 3yo would cry because he had watched the previous 20 seasons of Power Rangers ad free. He seriously thought that the show had ended. I think a lot of parents are going ad free, so it should be intriguing to see how these ad free kids turn out. Either they'll be hyper gullible or super savvy.
I see where you are coming from. The concern is that if kids never see ads, how will they recognize ads as adults? While I recognize that, I purposely keep my children ad free as much as possible and its had a lot of positive effects. When my kids go down the cereal aisle at a supermarket, they're not screaming for the brand name cereal like my siblings and I did as children. I'm able to teach them first to look at nutrition labels, how to spot marketing techniques like greenwashing, etc... And now that they are able to think, we can sit down and discuss an advertisement when they show up.
A bit of a story. My 3yo son was playing with an app geared for preschoolers when suddenly a full video toy ad played. He was captivated, thought they were the most amazing toy ever, and began repeating the catchphrase of the ad all day that day. My 6yo daughter sat down with him and said, "That's an ad. It looks cool, but in real life it might not be as much fun as the ad makes it out to be." She understood it.
So my point is to have the parent educate their kids on marketing rather than have them figure it out the hard way by becoming a target of advertising.
Bing is the successor to Microsoft's MSN search tool. Here's a site that will allow you to compare bing to Google. http://www.bingiton.com/. I still use Google since Google tends to get me to technical results faster, but Bing really isn't a bad search engine if you can get past the fact that its done by Microsoft.
Not a special version of the browser, but rather a special version of Bing.