He doesn't think he speaks for most gaming enthusiasts? How do you know? Can you read minds? Cool!

I don't think that's even possible.

The fact that this is a massive assumption once the codebases start diverging was the point of the GP post.

I wouldn't say I hate any given group of people right now. Unless you want to try to lump bigots themselves into a group, and say that I'm bigoted against them... but I don't even really hate them. I'm disgusted by their words and actions, but the people themselves I only pity. Going through life like that, with all that fear and insecurity... it must be awful. I bet they wouldn't be that way if they could choose.

Have you taken a long hard look at this stance? It's easy to "always" do something because you've always done it, but I've found that when I really look at the past me, it turns out that he's been wrong a lot. I used to believe this as well, but on further examination, I've come to realize that I only held that belief because it was convenient. It allowed me to listen to a band I liked, even though they'd made some statements that were ignorant at best. Pretty similar to this situation, really.

I'm not saying you should stop enjoying something just because the artist is, oh let's just pick a totally random example and say a frightened crazy bigot. I'm not saying you should even care to look it up--there's only so much time in the day, after all. But you certainly shouldn't intentionally ignore that information, any more than you should pull a $20 out of your wallet and set it on fire. That artist's views, along with everything else in their lives, informed their art. Do you really believe that knowing this about the author doesn't put some of what he wrote into a new light? He's a science-fiction author, a genre known for examining morals. Even if he tried, which very few do, to separate his own personal morals from what he writes, do you think there's any chance he succeeded?

As long as you're a human being, and not a computer, you are biased. While a computer can run a program, impartially applying an algorithm to an input and produce a consistent output, you cannot. You're changed by every bit of input you receive. The best you can do is try to make the change a positive one. Tossing out information like this puts you at a disadvantage there. You're trying to make yourself like a computer, but the best you'll achieve is sharing their biggest vulnerability; garbage in, garbage out.

Maybe this will change in the future, but as of today, I hope that if I ever become a hateful bigot, society will spurn me. Is it possible that you're confusing freedom of speech with forcing people to listen? As someone who makes his living based off of what he says, maybe he should be the one being careful.

Mozilla sells your privacy. You are their product, the browser's their bait. Microsoft sells a product. And your privacy. But they make most of their money off other stuff, selling your privacy is just their change jar.

It's all about motive. Now, some might wonder if someone who doesn't survive off selling your privacy will take better or worse care of it than someone who will die if anything happens to their access to your personal data, but I doubt very many think like that.

You can never clean up a system. MD5s help, but you know what one of the first things I'd do when rooting a system is? After making sure my rootkit didn't show up in directory listings, I'd patch md5, shasum, perl, and ruby to return the exact MD5 I wanted for every file I defined a magic string for.

You gonna catch me on some systems? Sure. You gonna catch me on an extremely common distro like Debian without installing out-of-tree software? Probably not.

This is why key management should be part of the operating system, and every piece of software that doesn't use those APIs should be suspect.

It's simply too big a subject to expect everyone who is in danger of falling prey to something similar (everyone who uses a computer) to manage on their own. If you know where every individual piece of software you run stores every single key, you are a very, very rare person. You're also probably mistaken.

Even if we started down the path, it would take a long time, that's no question. But I can think of no other alternative that has even an ounce of realistic chance of success.

Haha what a scrub, my wife and I each have our own houses! I mean seriously, if you're a grown-ass adult that can't afford two houses in the hills I don't know what to tell you.

How did you miss the part where the tube is surgically connected to a port on the abdomen?

Yes, it is. At least, it's bulimia. I don't see anything respectable at all about surgically altering yourself so you can gorge and still lose weight, and I guess time will tell if it's marketable (although I doubt it'll be even as successful as lap band surgery), but yeah, it's definitely mechanical barfing.

I wouldn't call looking things up that TV makes you think of being distractable, it's being active instead of passive. It's a good thing, looking up other sides to a news story, doing a quick Wikipedia safari on something that comes up that you don't know about, it's all much more intellectually demanding, and enriching, than just sitting there vegging out in front of the tube.

And man, now I'm old. I'm calling the TV the "tube". I used to look at my grandparents/parents funny when they called the microwave the "radar range". Crap.

Your theory is a very good one. Not that I think it's likely to be correct, but it's good in that it's easily testable.

Which happened first? Banning leaded gasoline, or the drop in crime? People aren't going to ban leaded gasoline in anticipation of crime rates dropping and having a more secure, better standard of living tomorrow, the vast majority of arrests happen within hours or days of the crime, and every last one has a report. Dates of where leaded gasoline was used are also well-documented.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "Jeez, these guys are scientists, why wouldn't they think of something so simple as checking the dates?" And if you are, congratulations. Now you're starting to think. The tricky part is realizing, and really internalizing the lesson, that you never get to stop.

Yep, SEO the shit out of the sites, in the most transparent, sure-to-get-a-site-delisted ways possible. Internet Judo, use his strength against him. Since they're on top, it's not like you can make it any worse, and it also means you don't have any direct contact with the guy--it's Google/Bing delisting him, not you. Anonymize the WHOIS information, and deny any knowledge if the guy contacts you. "What, you put up a site saying bad complaining about me? Weird, man, but whatever floats your boat. Good luck with that I guess."

And of course if Google/Bing contact you, just say, "I've been contracted to make this the top result, if you try to delist this site you'll be hearing from my lawyers." They already know you can't do jack, and they'll enjoy tweaking "your" nose and you'll find the site delisted in short order.

Other alternatives

DDOS: Illegal, don't be an idiot. Also feeds the troll, you know better than that don't you?

Register trademark & use ICANN: You're rolling the dice here, feeling lucky?

Anything + lawyer: Probably best chance of success, once you sue successfully it just makes further suits easier if he's dumb enough to stick a fork in the toaster a second time. But keep in mind, these guys do not understand the Streisand effect, and what's more, many probably actively want it. Free publicity for them, and then you have to pay!

Completely ignore it: Probably the best option. People get bored. He's doing this to get a rise out of someone who rejected him. Chances are good he'll escalate when he doesn't get the reaction he wants. If he goes big enough, you'll be able to catch his hand in the bear trap of the court system, otherwise just keep ignoring it. Escalation means you're winning. If he's quietly running the same site 3 years later, well, then you're dealing with a patient, smart, asshole, which is pretty much your worst nightmare. Good luck.

Yeah, they probably would get the message pretty quick. But let's be real here, we're not going to send that message. To keep their two-party system going, they don't have to fool all the people, just 67% of them (at worst). Which, as it turns out, is pretty easy.