Then you don't know anything about Islam other than what you think you've learned from news sites and CNN.
Go read the Qu'ran. There are plenty of instances in which religiously-motivated violence is condoned or even instructed. Of course, the apologists will immediately cite other examples from the Qu'ran that contradict that. The nice thing about Islam is that its followers can pick and choose: Show the peaceful bits to the ignorant dhimmi and the violent bits to the true followers. You'll never get a straight answer.
This is not unique to Islam, of course. Most religions have similar contradictions that allow believers to pick-and-choose according to the situation and the audience. The problem is that currently, Islam's violent underpinnings are causing far more problems for the world than the violent underpinnings of other religions.
Your anti-believe in God is just as fervent as any foaming at the mouth preachers belief.
Bullshit. If someone wants to convince me that God exists, the onus is on the believer to supply proof.
People who do follow religion are demonstrably capable of believing in supernatural beings without the slightest shred of evidence. That's already a good sign they're not quite rational and the more weak-minded among them are ripe to be recruited by extremists.
Every Iranian I've ever met has been erudite, intelligent, moderate and truly delightful. The Iranian people are oppressed by Islamists who justify their power by appealing to Islam. As long as Islam holds sway over a billion+ people, injustices like the Iranian theocracy will perpetuate.
People react to the culture in which they're brought up.
So... does it have nothing to do with culture and religion that most Muslim countries have poor human development levels? That most Muslim countries are sexist (in practice even if they deny it) and homophomic? That a disproportionate number of conflicts involve Muslim countries? Or that most people killed in religiously-motivated riots in the last 50 years have been killed by Muslims (and indeed, have probably been Muslim themselves)?
As another atheist, I think all religion is bad. But just because all religions are bad doesn't mean that all religions are equally bad and at this particular moment in history, Islam is by far the most dangerous religion.
Ah. You take the other risks that I missed. Gotcha.
Those would be.... ?
I run Linux everywhere. Sure, there are holes in Linux and in Linux applications just like everything else, but I don't think there are any actual Linux viruses in the wild, nor is there much money to be made developing Linux viruses. Of much more concern to me are cross-platform things like Java, Flash and Adobe Acrobat bugs... and even those often have system-specific exploits that are much more likely to target Windows.
Just think about it. The average Windows AV program runs with sufficient privilege to wreck your system by altering or removing arbitrary files. And it gets fed multiple updates per day created by teams of workers working in a hugely stressful situation: When a new virus appears, you've got to get those signatures out NOW.
First of all, the serial numbers are on the counterfoils which are torn off before the ballot is placed in the ballot box. Once the ballot is in the box, there's no way to know its serial number.
Secondly, there's no way to recover the sequence of voters. When you vote, the election worker crosses your name off an alphabetical list of electors. (You watch this happen.) There's no way to take the list of crossed-off names and deduce the sequence of voters.
Well, I don't know all the details, but off the top of my head:
Leave a thumb drive around with malware on it.
If you have physical access to the machine, pay voters to insert thumb drive with malware.
"Accidentally" pull the power cord on the computer and boot off a thumb drive while no-one's looking.
Compromise the software by planting a mole in the company that makes the machines.
Go into the polling booth with a degausser and mess with the hard drive. (This would be a DoS attack, of course.)
Apply 100VDC to the handiest USB port. (DoS again.)
Stick packing tape on the touch screen. (DoS)
It really just depends on how much you're willing to pay. And if the paper trail prevents such fraud, then why not just use paper to begin with and forget about stupid compromisable electronic technology?
Not necessarily. The reason these direct democracy provisions were added to many state constitutions (mostly around 1895) was to prevent a politician that was elected saying he'd do one thing to then go on and instead do something completely different.
But that's the only way to run a country. Of course no politician could possibly get elected on a platform of raising taxes and reducing spending, but that's exactly what the USA needs to get out of the hole it's in. Direct democracy provisions prevent politicians from making hard decisions that hurt in the short term but are necessary for the long term.
There are other significant difference between Canada and the US: In the US, you have to register to vote and the mechanisms vary from state to state. In Canada, almost everyone is registered automatically (data are taken from various sources such as motor vehicle registrations, income tax returns, etc.) And if you are not registered for some reason, you can register right at the polling station on voting day.
A second difference is that in Canada, federal elections are run by the federal Elections Canada department. This ensures that everyone uses the same technology to vote. In the USA, even federal elections are administered by the states, so people in different states may end up using vastly different voting technology (witness the 2000 election.)
I've spoken to some Americans about this, and they say one problem with US elections is that the ballots are humongous. Many states allow voters to vote on propositions during election time, so when it comes time to vote you really have to cast tens of votes for all kinds of different things. (Any Americans want to confirm this?)
So obviously the solution to this is: Don't do that. Simplify things and get rid of the whole "Proposition X" nonsense. It certainly does nothing to improve democracy, but it's excellent at dividing communities and driving state and local governments into bankruptcy.
The population of Canada is about 34 million, which is a bit less than the population of California.
SInce the population of counters scales with the population of voters, hand-counting votes is O(log N) complexity and can easily scale to a country like the USA.
The O(log N) factor comes from the need to aggregate votes which is most efficiently done with a tree structure of aggregators.
Hand-counting may be prone to errors, but the errors are small and localized. It would take enormous resources to get away with massive fraud in a hand-counted system.
With electronic voting, on the other hand, you only need to exploit one flaw in the system to perpetrate massive undetectable fraud.
In fact, I can't think of anything else where we would want things done by hand versus machine in the 21st century.
What a ridiculous statement. Sometimes new technology is just new, not better. If you want to throw democracy down the sewer, then by all means go for electronic voting. As a Canadian, I'm happy to stick with our old, understandable and reliable technology.
We don't need a longer school year. What we need is better holiday distribution. RIght now where I live (Ontario, Canada) our kids get two weeks off in December, one in March and about 9 in the summer.
It would make more sense to have August, December and April off so there are three month-long breaks. That way, there's no long summer holiday during which kids can forget what they've learned. It also makes holiday planning a bit easier on parents; we don't have to cram everything into the summer.
Two obvious use-cases: A mail spool directory and a database transaction log directory. Both can benefit enormously from RAM speeds yet must survive power failures. As a bonus, they don't usually use that much storage, so a few GB or tens of GB is probably fine.
The problem is that belief in God is consistent with anything. No matter what objections one may raise, one can counter them with "Well, God just arranged it to look that way."
As a result, belief in God is not useful. It's also often extremely harmful... because it's consistent with anything, it can be (and is) used to justify all sorts of evil.
Slashdot Mirror
Go read the Qu'ran. There are plenty of instances in which religiously-motivated violence is condoned or even instructed. Of course, the apologists will immediately cite other examples from the Qu'ran that contradict that. The nice thing about Islam is that its followers can pick and choose: Show the peaceful bits to the ignorant dhimmi and the violent bits to the true followers. You'll never get a straight answer.
This is not unique to Islam, of course. Most religions have similar contradictions that allow believers to pick-and-choose according to the situation and the audience. The problem is that currently, Islam's violent underpinnings are causing far more problems for the world than the violent underpinnings of other religions.
And what if it is? It seems to me that Islam does condone (hell no, recommend) the use of violence to spread Islam.
Bullshit. If someone wants to convince me that God exists, the onus is on the believer to supply proof.
People who do follow religion are demonstrably capable of believing in supernatural beings without the slightest shred of evidence. That's already a good sign they're not quite rational and the more weak-minded among them are ripe to be recruited by extremists.
Every Iranian I've ever met has been erudite, intelligent, moderate and truly delightful. The Iranian people are oppressed by Islamists who justify their power by appealing to Islam. As long as Islam holds sway over a billion+ people, injustices like the Iranian theocracy will perpetuate.
So... does it have nothing to do with culture and religion that most Muslim countries have poor human development levels? That most Muslim countries are sexist (in practice even if they deny it) and homophomic? That a disproportionate number of conflicts involve Muslim countries? Or that most people killed in religiously-motivated riots in the last 50 years have been killed by Muslims (and indeed, have probably been Muslim themselves)?
As another atheist, I think all religion is bad. But just because all religions are bad doesn't mean that all religions are equally bad and at this particular moment in history, Islam is by far the most dangerous religion.
Those would be .... ?
I run Linux everywhere. Sure, there are holes in Linux and in Linux applications just like everything else, but I don't think there are any actual Linux viruses in the wild, nor is there much money to be made developing Linux viruses. Of much more concern to me are cross-platform things like Java, Flash and Adobe Acrobat bugs... and even those often have system-specific exploits that are much more likely to target Windows.
Neither. I don't run Windows AV software and I don't run Windows.
Passports make sense because by the time you're done being manhandled by the TSA or CATSA, you're likely to look very grumpy anyway.
But I'm usually not in a terrible mood when I'm driving.
Just think about it. The average Windows AV program runs with sufficient privilege to wreck your system by altering or removing arbitrary files. And it gets fed multiple updates per day created by teams of workers working in a hugely stressful situation: When a new virus appears, you've got to get those signatures out NOW.
I'm amazed people don't see this risks in this.
I was reading about this in a couple of other tabs when... dang... lost my train of thought...
What if you run everything in a virtual machine and take a screenshot of the VM window?
Sounds like snake-oil to me.
No, they are not. Please give one citation within the last 100 years in which Jews or Christians killed people because of a film they found offensive.
The parent comment is utter rubbish.
First of all, the serial numbers are on the counterfoils which are torn off before the ballot is placed in the ballot box. Once the ballot is in the box, there's no way to know its serial number.
Secondly, there's no way to recover the sequence of voters. When you vote, the election worker crosses your name off an alphabetical list of electors. (You watch this happen.) There's no way to take the list of crossed-off names and deduce the sequence of voters.
Well, I don't know all the details, but off the top of my head:
It really just depends on how much you're willing to pay. And if the paper trail prevents such fraud, then why not just use paper to begin with and forget about stupid compromisable electronic technology?
The Iranians did not connect their centrifuge-controlling PCs to the Internet and yet they suffered massive compromise.
If you can't think of several ways to compromise the Virginia voting machines, you're obviously not much of a computer scientist.
Not necessarily. The reason these direct democracy provisions were added to many state constitutions (mostly around 1895) was to prevent a politician that was elected saying he'd do one thing to then go on and instead do something completely different.
But that's the only way to run a country. Of course no politician could possibly get elected on a platform of raising taxes and reducing spending, but that's exactly what the USA needs to get out of the hole it's in. Direct democracy provisions prevent politicians from making hard decisions that hurt in the short term but are necessary for the long term.
How do you film a virus? How do you guard a software flaw?
There are other significant difference between Canada and the US: In the US, you have to register to vote and the mechanisms vary from state to state. In Canada, almost everyone is registered automatically (data are taken from various sources such as motor vehicle registrations, income tax returns, etc.) And if you are not registered for some reason, you can register right at the polling station on voting day.
A second difference is that in Canada, federal elections are run by the federal Elections Canada department. This ensures that everyone uses the same technology to vote. In the USA, even federal elections are administered by the states, so people in different states may end up using vastly different voting technology (witness the 2000 election.)
It took two weeks...
Two weeks to count the ballots in a municipal election?? Do they not teach counting in kindergarten in LA? :)
I've spoken to some Americans about this, and they say one problem with US elections is that the ballots are humongous. Many states allow voters to vote on propositions during election time, so when it comes time to vote you really have to cast tens of votes for all kinds of different things. (Any Americans want to confirm this?)
So obviously the solution to this is: Don't do that. Simplify things and get rid of the whole "Proposition X" nonsense. It certainly does nothing to improve democracy, but it's excellent at dividing communities and driving state and local governments into bankruptcy.
The population of Canada is about 34 million, which is a bit less than the population of California.
SInce the population of counters scales with the population of voters, hand-counting votes is O(log N) complexity and can easily scale to a country like the USA.
The O(log N) factor comes from the need to aggregate votes which is most efficiently done with a tree structure of aggregators.
Hand-counting may be prone to errors, but the errors are small and localized. It would take enormous resources to get away with massive fraud in a hand-counted system.
With electronic voting, on the other hand, you only need to exploit one flaw in the system to perpetrate massive undetectable fraud.
In fact, I can't think of anything else where we would want things done by hand versus machine in the 21st century.
What a ridiculous statement. Sometimes new technology is just new, not better. If you want to throw democracy down the sewer, then by all means go for electronic voting. As a Canadian, I'm happy to stick with our old, understandable and reliable technology.
We don't need a longer school year. What we need is better holiday distribution. RIght now where I live (Ontario, Canada) our kids get two weeks off in December, one in March and about 9 in the summer.
It would make more sense to have August, December and April off so there are three month-long breaks. That way, there's no long summer holiday during which kids can forget what they've learned. It also makes holiday planning a bit easier on parents; we don't have to cram everything into the summer.
Two obvious use-cases: A mail spool directory and a database transaction log directory. Both can benefit enormously from RAM speeds yet must survive power failures. As a bonus, they don't usually use that much storage, so a few GB or tens of GB is probably fine.
The problem is that belief in God is consistent with anything. No matter what objections one may raise, one can counter them with "Well, God just arranged it to look that way."
As a result, belief in God is not useful. It's also often extremely harmful... because it's consistent with anything, it can be (and is) used to justify all sorts of evil.
Or to put it in the language of logic: A false premise implies any conclusion (See #3).