Well, unless you're one of the users whose machine got infected with malware during the week. Then you'd be a little bit pissed.
I agree that not all webmasters are incompetent, but I don't see why that means a tool like this should assume the opposite. A competent webmaster would probably fix the problem (even if it means temporarily removing the widget) as soon as they were notified in any case, not to mention that they'd be less likely to put a sketchy 3rd party component anyway.
Um, no. A website can get hits 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and while some websites have webmasters able to give that much coverage, most do not. What about all of the users who could potentially become infected in the time between when Google spots the malware and the webmaster can fix the problem? How long would Google give them to fix it before just putting up a notice anyway? The point is to control the propagation of malware, not give webmasters a chance to stop sucking at life before warning end users that the site is full of malware and incompetence.
"Do you realize how much resources societies spend on religions? It seems large numbers of the devout, especially the fundamentalist and evangelical types, have serious psychological and emotional problems (other than delusion). If all the resources spent on this religious "folk psychology" were instead used to hire REAL psychological help, or to better educate these desperate religious followers so that they can rise out of poverty, the world may just be much better off."
Believe it or not, most priests/reverends/ministers/pastors/imams/whatever are actually very well educated and intelligent, often holding degrees from well regarded colleges and universities in subjects ranging from philosophy to ethics to psychology to literature to history, and are not infrequently qualified to be REAL psychologists, or at least counselors, anyway. They usually provide their services much cheaper (often for free, even to non-church members) than other practitioners, and typically refer individuals that need help they are unable to provide to professionals better able to assist them. Again, this is only most, I realize that there are some crackpots out there, but the majority are actually good.
"Lots of these people need medicine! Giving their money away to some guy who claims to be an expert on magic, and who tells them that they have depression because they are sinners or don't have enough faith will not cure them."
You realize that a very large number of mental health professionals prefer not to use medication unless absolutely necessary, and that this is generally considered to be the correct way to do things, right? Medication is not always the answer, and shouldn't be. In fact, the majority of psychological treatment consists of meeting with a psychologist and talking... a lot of problems are worked through by having someone who will listen and help, and there's no reason to say that religious teachers can't do that. You are characterizing a very large group by the actions of a very small number, and one that is not very well regarded by the rest at that.
"Listen, old man. Your gray beard gives you no special powers over younger people. Try using arguments instead of insults."
I started learning about philosophy and religions at a very young age, and I started doing so by talking to much older and more educated people a great deal. By age 18 I had a considerable amount of theology and apologetics under my belt, and was better (if informally) educated in philosophy and ethics than most people of any age. I'm certainly not old, and though I have a beard it is most assuredly not gray. I'm also not insulting anyone, I'm telling (some) people what they don't want to hear, specifically that they don't know what they're talking about.
"The idea that religion benefits people enough to justify its high cost in terms of time and money is being called into serious question in intellectual and academic circles today."
Actually, no, it isn't. No serious intellectual or academic circle would waste their time with something so pointless. That's the sort of thing left to pseudo-intellectuals without any relevant academic experience to discuss. Though if you want my answer: it depends on who you're talking about, how you define good, and what values you place on time and money; some religious groups really are a con intended to fleece the superstitious and gullible, some are incredibly wasteful and tend to squander their resources without managing to give anything back, and the majority of them take up very few resources and tend to do a lot of good with what they get, but you don't hear about them because they're busy being normal people trying to help out a little when they can and don't have the time or money to run around making a big show of it.
For the record, I am not a member of any organized religion.
"Like brainwashing them to believe that if they strap on a bomb and kill the infidel, they'll go straight to heaven where virgins await them?"
Since that is apparently directed at Muslims... the vast majority of Muslims do not believe that in any way, and the Koran is actually very clear on the rules of war, prohibiting things like the targeting of civilians, kidnapping, wanton destruction of buildings, torture, or killing any more than necessary to achieve the objectives. The fact that, out of over 1 billion people, a few thousand are so dangerously sociopathic as to believe that drivel is 9sadly) unsurprising, and criticizing the entire religion for it is simply unfair.
"Prove it. I'm not buying it for a second. I've found religious types to be among the most intolerant people on the planet. Let's see, atheists are bad. Homosexuals are bad. Science is bad. People who believe in a different religion from you are bad. And so on, ad infinitum. Guess what happens to bad people? They often get beaten, locked up, or killed. Yeah, religion is great."
You realize that the entire Civil Rights Movement was built on the efforts of religious groups, right? I've never heard the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as 'intolerant" before. The ministers at the Episcopalian church in the town I grew up have decided not to perform any weddings in protest of their denomination's decision not to recognize same-sex marriage or allow the ceremonies to occur in their churches. Pope John Paul II was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end "communist" (quotes mine, for ideological clarity) oppression, and was very active in trying to mend millenniums old rifts with other religions (Judaism, Islam) and denominations (Eastern Orthodox, Anglicanism), as well as being a friend of the Dalai Lama. The number of very highly regarded homeless shelters, soup kitchens, mission schools and hospitals, grief counseling centers, scholarships, and other charity and community service efforts organized and operated by religious groups is beyond count.
You're letting a few bad apples ruin your opinion of a group larger than you can imagine, and then acting as if you're smarter than anyone else because of it. Sure there are some bad people who justify doing bad things with all sorts of reasons, and unfortunately religion is a very popular one to use, but they are far from the majority, though they do tend to shout considerably louder.
I'm not a member of any organized religion, by the way.
MAD says no. Dell, as the world's largest PC manufacturer, is also Microsoft's top customer, so it is highly unlikely that Microsoft is going to try pushing them around that way. Besides that, Michael Dell is very well connected politically, perhaps even better than Billy (at the moment), so you can be sure that the DOJ would give Dell a fair shake in any sort of anti-trust litigation. Plus, even at worst, Dell would have to Vista retail, making Windows boxen even more expensive than Ubuntu ones greatly increasing the consumer incentive to buy one of those instead. It's going to be a FUD campaign of epic proportions, but I really doubt we'll see M$ trying to leverage their market share this time around; it's just too likely to backfire.
It used to be that employers had all the rights, but then they learned that they could get away with all sorts of nasty tricks that not only increase profitability but ALSO put their employees into a state of permanent poverty so that they couldn't afford to quit or unionize no matter how miserable or mistreated they were. Things like intentionally having more workers show up than will be needed and sending the rest home without pay in order to save time and effort on proper scheduling, or firing people without cause in order to avoid things like contractually granted benefits, or covertly monitoring employee friendships and terminating key employees whenever there seems to be a threat of union activity, or just firing a good employee because your idiot nephew thinks he can do it and you don't like the guy's nose.
In other words, we've realized as a society that employers don't need much legal protection because they're the guys with the money and power. Sorry if that makes it harder for you to just up and fire people, or if you think the only reason people don't work is that they don't want to (it couldn't possibly be because they can't find work, that's inconceivable), but you're much better able to hurt your employees than they are to hurt you, so they get the protections.
Hey, on the bright side, you could always cheer yourself up with a money bath! I know times are tough so it's hard to get enough hundreds, but you could always use fifties or even twenties if that's what it takes.
The difference is that even if there is no deity, the majority religions still provide useful and positive services to their members. There are some whackjobs in organized religion to be sure, but most clergy by whatever name they're called, as well as most believers, are good, honest people who try to do right in the world and from time to time succeed.
I realize that when you're a young "atheist", head all full of newfound rhetorical and "logical" techniques, it seems cool to paint organized religion as a blight upon the world using the broadest strokes, but I assure you that it just annoys the rest of us. I've gone through a fairly wide philosophical and religious spectrum during my lifetime so far, there have been points where I would agree with you, and there have been points where I'd wish your type would shut up and stay off my "side" because immature religion bashing in no way helps the atheist cause or ethos, and now I'm at the point where I just smack my forehead and hope that you get over it for your own sake.
For the record, I'm not much of a gambling man, but I'd put money on some serious atheists with mod points either shoving you down or refusing to waste one saving you. That's what happens when you start spouting inflammatory nonsense and making yourself, as well as atheism, look stupid and childish.
Not to be an ass about your dead friend... but seriously, relax. Suck as it may, he's gone, and there's no sense in worrying he might have been injured, or that he's offended.
Besides, I'd expect that if your buddy wanted to be launched into space, he'd have a sense of humor about this sort of thing.
Ever heard of The Wheel of Time? How about Redwall? Dragonlance? All started out awesome, then around the fourth (+- 1) book you start to realize that the series is never going to end, the characters will never finish their quest, and you've spent 40 hours of you life reading books that have steadily declined in quality, and you're never going to be able to get that time back.
And what rage? I'm not threatening to burn down Disney World, or try and file some sort of idiotic feel-good lawsuit, I'm just saying that if Disney wants to make special rules for themselves that force customers to watch ads despite those customers having paid a premium, at least in part, not to do so, then I refuse to support their business practices.
Anyway, once they get this, I believe 100% that they'll start going after alternatives. Forcing DVRs to not skip ads will come soon enough. And once disney gets it, hell, why not everyone else?
Maybe if Disney were an otherwise decent company, and they weren't always so quick to be on the forefront of fucking over their customers, I'd be less willing to just go without. Or if they made anything truly worth watching, that could help.
Close, lifelong polyamorous relationships exist and they work no worse (or better, to be sure) than exclusive ones.
You are making assumptions about the motivations and concerns of polyamorous individuals that are neither valid nor relevant; they are just as complex as "normal" relationships, and are no more or less likely to succeed or fail. Frankly, so many exclusive relationships are twisted, bizarre, deceptive, or otherwise problematic that I find it hard to take the idea that polyamorous ones could be any worse seriously.
Your continued use of the word "shallow" leads me to believe that you don't understand what makes any relationship, romantic or otherwise, "deep", so my best guess is that you think it's a matter of exclusivity... I assure you that it is not.
I don't mind ads, and I'm not willing to spend money trying to avoid watching them, but if they're going to go out of their way to force paying customers to watch ads that they don't want to, then I won't hesitate one bit to just not watch any of it.
Fuck Disney, fuck them in the ear. Eisner can kiss my ass if he thinks Disney has some God-given right to force people to watch ads and make them money.
You have know idea what polyamorous relationships are like or how they work, and are simply inserting your own assumptions and biases in the place of reality. Polyamory is not just having sex with more than one person, and polyamorous people don't necessarily even have more sex than those of us who are not... there are even single polys, or polys who are exclusive when it comes to intercourse, or have all sorts of other rules or agreements; very rare is the open relationship where both parties just say "just go out and fuck whatever you want whenever you want... hell, that's what open relationships are about!" and trying to cast all polyamoous relationships as such is just silly. You just can't imagine it working, and have never seen a working example, and extend this into saying it can't work and working examples don't exist. The argument from ignorance is invalid, and you should stop using it while you still have some shreds of credibility.
I'm not poly, by the way, I'm just very close to a large poly community. I made a conscious decision not to be poly because I don't feel that I'm personally able to deal with it. I'm currently in a closed relationship, and my girlfriend and I are both happy with it. Other people are always going to make choices that are different than mine on this and many other issues, and that is OK.
Predictions about the future are nothing if not notoriously wrong. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, because it's never wrong to have an idea where you think things are going or where you want them to go, just keep in mind you'll probably be at least 75% wrong about everything.
True, but then again they haven't actually said they own the number. They use the number in context, and are upset because it is being distributed as a specific component of their product. There hasn't been any mention of suing anyone who came to this number independently for unrelated reasons, because it's just a number.
I'm not saying this because I agree with AACS on this, or because I even remotely support DRM, I'm just opposed to straw men.
Have you ever read M. Butterfly? You might like it.
As for not being able to bomb westernization into the hearts of 1.3 billion people... rational people, including us Americans, find the idea of bombing any number of people into westernization to be both patently absurd and disturbingly sociopathic. Try as some may to believe otherwise, bombs are great at changing live people into dead people, built things into unbuilt things, and not a whole hell of a lot else, certainly not at affecting "positive" philosophical and ideological change. Sadly, the irrational currently have us outnumbered and they're frickin' nuts.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, unless you're one of the users whose machine got infected with malware during the week. Then you'd be a little bit pissed.
I agree that not all webmasters are incompetent, but I don't see why that means a tool like this should assume the opposite. A competent webmaster would probably fix the problem (even if it means temporarily removing the widget) as soon as they were notified in any case, not to mention that they'd be less likely to put a sketchy 3rd party component anyway.
I'm not sure that even qualifies as debatable...
Um, no. A website can get hits 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and while some websites have webmasters able to give that much coverage, most do not. What about all of the users who could potentially become infected in the time between when Google spots the malware and the webmaster can fix the problem? How long would Google give them to fix it before just putting up a notice anyway? The point is to control the propagation of malware, not give webmasters a chance to stop sucking at life before warning end users that the site is full of malware and incompetence.
"Do you realize how much resources societies spend on religions? It seems large numbers of the devout, especially the fundamentalist and evangelical types, have serious psychological and emotional problems (other than delusion). If all the resources spent on this religious "folk psychology" were instead used to hire REAL psychological help, or to better educate these desperate religious followers so that they can rise out of poverty, the world may just be much better off."
r are actually very well educated and intelligent, often holding degrees from well regarded colleges and universities in subjects ranging from philosophy to ethics to psychology to literature to history, and are not infrequently qualified to be REAL psychologists, or at least counselors, anyway. They usually provide their services much cheaper (often for free, even to non-church members) than other practitioners, and typically refer individuals that need help they are unable to provide to professionals better able to assist them. Again, this is only most, I realize that there are some crackpots out there, but the majority are actually good.
Believe it or not, most priests/reverends/ministers/pastors/imams/whateve
"Lots of these people need medicine! Giving their money away to some guy who claims to be an expert on magic, and who tells them that they have depression because they are sinners or don't have enough faith will not cure them."
You realize that a very large number of mental health professionals prefer not to use medication unless absolutely necessary, and that this is generally considered to be the correct way to do things, right? Medication is not always the answer, and shouldn't be. In fact, the majority of psychological treatment consists of meeting with a psychologist and talking... a lot of problems are worked through by having someone who will listen and help, and there's no reason to say that religious teachers can't do that. You are characterizing a very large group by the actions of a very small number, and one that is not very well regarded by the rest at that.
"Listen, old man. Your gray beard gives you no special powers over younger people. Try using arguments instead of insults."
I started learning about philosophy and religions at a very young age, and I started doing so by talking to much older and more educated people a great deal. By age 18 I had a considerable amount of theology and apologetics under my belt, and was better (if informally) educated in philosophy and ethics than most people of any age. I'm certainly not old, and though I have a beard it is most assuredly not gray. I'm also not insulting anyone, I'm telling (some) people what they don't want to hear, specifically that they don't know what they're talking about.
"The idea that religion benefits people enough to justify its high cost in terms of time and money is being called into serious question in intellectual and academic circles today."
Actually, no, it isn't. No serious intellectual or academic circle would waste their time with something so pointless. That's the sort of thing left to pseudo-intellectuals without any relevant academic experience to discuss. Though if you want my answer: it depends on who you're talking about, how you define good, and what values you place on time and money; some religious groups really are a con intended to fleece the superstitious and gullible, some are incredibly wasteful and tend to squander their resources without managing to give anything back, and the majority of them take up very few resources and tend to do a lot of good with what they get, but you don't hear about them because they're busy being normal people trying to help out a little when they can and don't have the time or money to run around making a big show of it.
For the record, I am not a member of any organized religion.
"Like brainwashing them to believe that if they strap on a bomb and kill the infidel, they'll go straight to heaven where virgins await them?"
Since that is apparently directed at Muslims... the vast majority of Muslims do not believe that in any way, and the Koran is actually very clear on the rules of war, prohibiting things like the targeting of civilians, kidnapping, wanton destruction of buildings, torture, or killing any more than necessary to achieve the objectives. The fact that, out of over 1 billion people, a few thousand are so dangerously sociopathic as to believe that drivel is 9sadly) unsurprising, and criticizing the entire religion for it is simply unfair.
"Prove it. I'm not buying it for a second. I've found religious types to be among the most intolerant people on the planet. Let's see, atheists are bad. Homosexuals are bad. Science is bad. People who believe in a different religion from you are bad. And so on, ad infinitum. Guess what happens to bad people? They often get beaten, locked up, or killed. Yeah, religion is great."
You realize that the entire Civil Rights Movement was built on the efforts of religious groups, right? I've never heard the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as 'intolerant" before. The ministers at the Episcopalian church in the town I grew up have decided not to perform any weddings in protest of their denomination's decision not to recognize same-sex marriage or allow the ceremonies to occur in their churches. Pope John Paul II was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end "communist" (quotes mine, for ideological clarity) oppression, and was very active in trying to mend millenniums old rifts with other religions (Judaism, Islam) and denominations (Eastern Orthodox, Anglicanism), as well as being a friend of the Dalai Lama. The number of very highly regarded homeless shelters, soup kitchens, mission schools and hospitals, grief counseling centers, scholarships, and other charity and community service efforts organized and operated by religious groups is beyond count.
You're letting a few bad apples ruin your opinion of a group larger than you can imagine, and then acting as if you're smarter than anyone else because of it. Sure there are some bad people who justify doing bad things with all sorts of reasons, and unfortunately religion is a very popular one to use, but they are far from the majority, though they do tend to shout considerably louder.
I'm not a member of any organized religion, by the way.
LOL.
...
Oh, huh, you weren't kidding...
LOL!
MAD says no. Dell, as the world's largest PC manufacturer, is also Microsoft's top customer, so it is highly unlikely that Microsoft is going to try pushing them around that way. Besides that, Michael Dell is very well connected politically, perhaps even better than Billy (at the moment), so you can be sure that the DOJ would give Dell a fair shake in any sort of anti-trust litigation. Plus, even at worst, Dell would have to Vista retail, making Windows boxen even more expensive than Ubuntu ones greatly increasing the consumer incentive to buy one of those instead. It's going to be a FUD campaign of epic proportions, but I really doubt we'll see M$ trying to leverage their market share this time around; it's just too likely to backfire.
See, it's like this:
It used to be that employers had all the rights, but then they learned that they could get away with all sorts of nasty tricks that not only increase profitability but ALSO put their employees into a state of permanent poverty so that they couldn't afford to quit or unionize no matter how miserable or mistreated they were. Things like intentionally having more workers show up than will be needed and sending the rest home without pay in order to save time and effort on proper scheduling, or firing people without cause in order to avoid things like contractually granted benefits, or covertly monitoring employee friendships and terminating key employees whenever there seems to be a threat of union activity, or just firing a good employee because your idiot nephew thinks he can do it and you don't like the guy's nose.
In other words, we've realized as a society that employers don't need much legal protection because they're the guys with the money and power. Sorry if that makes it harder for you to just up and fire people, or if you think the only reason people don't work is that they don't want to (it couldn't possibly be because they can't find work, that's inconceivable), but you're much better able to hurt your employees than they are to hurt you, so they get the protections.
Hey, on the bright side, you could always cheer yourself up with a money bath! I know times are tough so it's hard to get enough hundreds, but you could always use fifties or even twenties if that's what it takes.
The difference is that even if there is no deity, the majority religions still provide useful and positive services to their members. There are some whackjobs in organized religion to be sure, but most clergy by whatever name they're called, as well as most believers, are good, honest people who try to do right in the world and from time to time succeed.
I realize that when you're a young "atheist", head all full of newfound rhetorical and "logical" techniques, it seems cool to paint organized religion as a blight upon the world using the broadest strokes, but I assure you that it just annoys the rest of us. I've gone through a fairly wide philosophical and religious spectrum during my lifetime so far, there have been points where I would agree with you, and there have been points where I'd wish your type would shut up and stay off my "side" because immature religion bashing in no way helps the atheist cause or ethos, and now I'm at the point where I just smack my forehead and hope that you get over it for your own sake.
For the record, I'm not much of a gambling man, but I'd put money on some serious atheists with mod points either shoving you down or refusing to waste one saving you. That's what happens when you start spouting inflammatory nonsense and making yourself, as well as atheism, look stupid and childish.
Yeah, fo' rizzle, G.
It's all about the Linux up in my 'hood. Crackersville, New England, holla!
Allow me to rephrase "awesome" as "pretty cool when you're 12".
Not to be an ass about your dead friend... but seriously, relax. Suck as it may, he's gone, and there's no sense in worrying he might have been injured, or that he's offended.
Besides, I'd expect that if your buddy wanted to be launched into space, he'd have a sense of humor about this sort of thing.
Ever heard of The Wheel of Time? How about Redwall? Dragonlance? All started out awesome, then around the fourth (+- 1) book you start to realize that the series is never going to end, the characters will never finish their quest, and you've spent 40 hours of you life reading books that have steadily declined in quality, and you're never going to be able to get that time back.
Tom Clancy's good for that too.
Well, unless it's one of those movies that lost money in theaters... in case, DVD sales are the only hope to recoup.
Fight Club would be one such film.
Chip on your shoulder?
Don't you have a book burning to go to or something?
Oh no, I got that, i just don't care.
And what rage? I'm not threatening to burn down Disney World, or try and file some sort of idiotic feel-good lawsuit, I'm just saying that if Disney wants to make special rules for themselves that force customers to watch ads despite those customers having paid a premium, at least in part, not to do so, then I refuse to support their business practices.
Anyway, once they get this, I believe 100% that they'll start going after alternatives. Forcing DVRs to not skip ads will come soon enough. And once disney gets it, hell, why not everyone else?
Maybe if Disney were an otherwise decent company, and they weren't always so quick to be on the forefront of fucking over their customers, I'd be less willing to just go without. Or if they made anything truly worth watching, that could help.
"I dunno if in the US, copyright violations are already superior offenses to crimes against the state."
In theory? No. In practice... the jury is still out on that one.
No, really, you just don't get it.
Close, lifelong polyamorous relationships exist and they work no worse (or better, to be sure) than exclusive ones.
You are making assumptions about the motivations and concerns of polyamorous individuals that are neither valid nor relevant; they are just as complex as "normal" relationships, and are no more or less likely to succeed or fail. Frankly, so many exclusive relationships are twisted, bizarre, deceptive, or otherwise problematic that I find it hard to take the idea that polyamorous ones could be any worse seriously.
Your continued use of the word "shallow" leads me to believe that you don't understand what makes any relationship, romantic or otherwise, "deep", so my best guess is that you think it's a matter of exclusivity... I assure you that it is not.
I don't mind ads, and I'm not willing to spend money trying to avoid watching them, but if they're going to go out of their way to force paying customers to watch ads that they don't want to, then I won't hesitate one bit to just not watch any of it.
Fuck Disney, fuck them in the ear. Eisner can kiss my ass if he thinks Disney has some God-given right to force people to watch ads and make them money.
Way to prove his point...
He never said it only went one way, or indicated which way that would be.
You have know idea what polyamorous relationships are like or how they work, and are simply inserting your own assumptions and biases in the place of reality. Polyamory is not just having sex with more than one person, and polyamorous people don't necessarily even have more sex than those of us who are not... there are even single polys, or polys who are exclusive when it comes to intercourse, or have all sorts of other rules or agreements; very rare is the open relationship where both parties just say "just go out and fuck whatever you want whenever you want... hell, that's what open relationships are about!" and trying to cast all polyamoous relationships as such is just silly. You just can't imagine it working, and have never seen a working example, and extend this into saying it can't work and working examples don't exist. The argument from ignorance is invalid, and you should stop using it while you still have some shreds of credibility.
I'm not poly, by the way, I'm just very close to a large poly community. I made a conscious decision not to be poly because I don't feel that I'm personally able to deal with it. I'm currently in a closed relationship, and my girlfriend and I are both happy with it. Other people are always going to make choices that are different than mine on this and many other issues, and that is OK.
You say publicity seeking, I say dangerously xenophobic and painfully stupid. Potatoes, potahtoes.
Plus flying cars.
Predictions about the future are nothing if not notoriously wrong. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, because it's never wrong to have an idea where you think things are going or where you want them to go, just keep in mind you'll probably be at least 75% wrong about everything.
True, but then again they haven't actually said they own the number. They use the number in context, and are upset because it is being distributed as a specific component of their product. There hasn't been any mention of suing anyone who came to this number independently for unrelated reasons, because it's just a number.
I'm not saying this because I agree with AACS on this, or because I even remotely support DRM, I'm just opposed to straw men.
Have you ever read M. Butterfly? You might like it.
As for not being able to bomb westernization into the hearts of 1.3 billion people... rational people, including us Americans, find the idea of bombing any number of people into westernization to be both patently absurd and disturbingly sociopathic. Try as some may to believe otherwise, bombs are great at changing live people into dead people, built things into unbuilt things, and not a whole hell of a lot else, certainly not at affecting "positive" philosophical and ideological change. Sadly, the irrational currently have us outnumbered and they're frickin' nuts.